


Take To The Skies

by Inked_Stars



Series: Winged AUs [2]
Category: Hermitcraft RPF, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Goat Hybrid Toby Smith | Tubbo, Hurt/Comfort, Hybrids, Magic, Manipulation, Possession, Shapeshifting, Video Game Mechanics, Winged Charles | Grian, Winged TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 32,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29002761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inked_Stars/pseuds/Inked_Stars
Summary: He darted to the portal, pushing through the ever-present barrier, into the centre of the portal...Tommy stumbled, emerging from the portal into an unfamiliar place....Or, Tommy ends up in Hermitcraft.
Series: Winged AUs [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124123
Comments: 315
Kudos: 1285
Collections: Completed stories I've read, Found family to make me feel something, Purrsonal Picks





	1. Chapter 1

He ran, clothes ragged and thin, scorched at the edges and stinking of gunpowder. He heaved for breath as he ran, further and faster, moving as swiftly as he could to escape his captor, his friend, or that’s what he was told. He wasn’t sure whether he could believe them anymore.

He chanced a glance behind him, seeing the green flash in his vision for a second, before it was gone again. He blinked, breaths coming faster as he sprinted. He ignored the promises of forgiveness, knowing there was little truth behind his words, he knew, he had learnt. He didn’t care to find out which type of forgiveness this would be.

He had experienced the harsh voices, the suffocating coddling and the empty, vacant departure of a person. He did not wish to be the subject of his ‘forgiveness’ if you were able to call it that.

He ducked below a low hanging branch, pulling it back and releasing it, hoping it hit his pursuer in the face.

It did. He heard the sound of a branch scraping across china and muffled curses underneath someone’s breath as they re-orientated themselves, before taking off after him again. He had only gained himself a few metres of distance, a few seconds ahead, but that was worth everything. He pulled ahead marginally, glimpsing the warping surface of a portal ahead of him. He knew they weren’t meant to go through that portal. No one knew why, but it was forbidden, just as the End was. 

He reached out towards it, feeling the cool warmth that it emitted, the particles sparking off the surface, swirling away, blinking out of existence almost instantly.

He reached towards it, willing his body to move forward into the portal, for him to be moved away from here.

A hand grabbed his shoulder, twisting him around and slamming him to the floor. A knee dug into his chest, pinning him to the stone bricks beneath his back. He felt as if he should be far above Dream at this point, able to soar away from him on the breezes, but he knew he didn’t have a trident, let alone a riptide one.

He also knew that was not how they worked, you needed water to power yourself into the air, and even then, it wouldn’t last. He shook away the faint feeling of longing, a sense he had done something before.

He focused on the porcelain mask in front of him, a crudely drawn smiley face present on its otherwise blank surface. The mask itself was in poor condition, the surface marred with scratches and dents, scorch marks present around the lower edge. The mask on the face doesn’t move, but the mouth underneath it does, the words it spits out laced with venom.

“Did you honestly think you could escape me? Escape this beautiful haven I have created in this world? The one meant to keep people contained, from escaping, from leaving. It’s where you were sent, and it is where you are supposed to stay.”

That made Tommy realise what was on the other side of the portal, a different world. One better than this one, judging from how Dream was treating it.

“It would break my poor heart to see you go Tommy.” He pouted, mocking him, “I would miss our fun little games Tommy, wouldn’t you?”

Tommy snarled at him, words of rage bubbling over his lips, like the lava he had longed for in the period of his life where he had let Dream control him, he was done lying down and rolling over, receiving kicks in the ribs that he could have fought back against.

He was unable to continue his rage fuelled rant, as he was stopped by a finger on his lips, accompanied by Dream shushing him like a misbehaving child. He reared his head back at the implication.

He struggled under Dream’s boot, heaving upwards and bucking like a wild animal, trying fruitlessly to free himself from his oppressor, the tyrant he had fought against for so long. He knew his death was imminent, but Dream liked toying with his prey, drawing out their suffering. He knew he was near the end of his, Dream had toyed with him the whole of his exile, treating him like a criminal, and stealing all of his stuff. Then he would turn around, almost a completely different person, swearing to Tommy that he was his friend, that he cared for him.

He had been so desperate for any kind of validation, that he had taken Dream at face value, forgetting that the man wears a mask, concealing his own face, and he had taken what he said for true, without being able to see the way the man emoted, the way he reacted.

Even without that he should have been able to sense the sinister undertones to Dream’s actions, the way he isolated him, insisting he was his only friend, and that no one else cared for him. And he had believed it, taking his word for truth. He couldn’t believe that he had allowed himself to be manipulated so easily.

Dream took his boot off of Tommy’s chest, in some misguided form of hubris, believing his power overruled the primal fear Tommy possessed, the urge to escape and run, as far away from Dream as he could.

He took his chance, wriggling out from where the boot hovered, the black leather glinting in the late sun, reflecting the rays back into his face, making the boot gleam.

He darted to the portal, pushing through the ever-present barrier, into the centre of the portal, the core, where the magic was stored. He stood, breathing fast and short, adrenaline pumping through his veins. The magic began to activate, making the portal glow bright, twisting and warping his view of the land ahead of him. As the portal activated, he saw Dream launch himself towards the portal, arm outstretched towards him, going to grab him by the arm and yank him out, ignoring the consequences they had all be warned of.

He watched as the arm crashed into a barrier, breaking on impact with a sickening crack and crunch. Tommy winced from the sound of it, watching, slightly gleefully, as Dream howled in pain and rage, clutching his arm and glaring through the portal at him.

He was whisked away.

…

Dream pounded on the barrier; it hadn’t come back down, even after Tommy had been teleported away. He threw his good arm towards the barrier, his other still healing from where it had broken, and he had chugged a health potion. 

He threw one last resentful glare to the portal before stalking away, back to Logstedshire. A plan was already forming in his mind. How he would be able to manipulate the situation at hand, assuring no one would go looking for Tommy. It was practically perfect, he had already been extremely isolated from the rest of the server, Dream ensured that. 

He let out a laugh at what he envisioned in his head, already imagining the looks of grief that would obscure the faces of his enemies. It would weaken them, causing an already crushed country to completely dissolve and crumble, removing the threat entirely. Not that there was much of one in the first place.

He knew where he had to go next.

He pulled up his admin panel, expanding the screen in front of him. He typed in coordinates, sending off a message to the rest of the server before he hit enter. He teleported away, blinking out of the smoking ruins of Logstedshire, ready to deliver the ‘news’ to L’Manburg.

He entered the gates, missing the sight of obsidian walls surrounding the country. Maybe he could convince them that they were for the better.

He walked into the centre, where the podium had stood before being blown up, he reminisced on the fun those times had been, allowing Wilbur to spiral, encouraging his bad coping habits, in the hopes that it would lead to his own demise. And he was right, it did, though not in the way he had first imagined.

The whole country had gathered, the few people remaining stood in small groups, warily glancing around, aware that he was approaching.

“Hello!” He greeted, grin wide underneath his mask, he turned to a more sombre tone, “I wish it were under better circumstances that we were meeting.”

He relished in the way multiple pairs of eyes widened at that statement, this was going wonderfully already, and he hadn’t even gotten to the main act yet.

“I come bringing bad news, terrible, horrible news.” He hoped they couldn’t hear the smile in his voice, that would destroy his carefully crafted persona.

“Tommy’s dead.” He stated, listening as gasps of horror echoed around the loose semi-circle that had formed “He decided that he was unable to continue, and he, he jumped into lava. I tried to stop him, but he threw me off, shoving me down to the floor. He broke my arm in the process, and I could do nothing but watch as he plummeted downwards. I didn’t watch as he hit the lava, the screams were enough for me.”

A sob broke out in the crowd, half-stifled. No one had to turn to know who it was. Tubbo, the person who had condemned Tommy to his fate, meaning he would now be vulnerable to suggestions and his ‘help’. Everything was going to plan.

More people broke down, some staring at him with wide, round eyes, unable to comprehend that Tommy was gone, and he would not be coming back. They all knew that Tommy had been on his last life.

Dream surveyed the destruction he had caused, the dust barely settling over their country, before he had swept in, the bearer of bad news, bringing with him the ability to reinvoke the grief that had barely subsided.

…

Tommy stumbled, emerging from the portal into an unfamiliar place. He felt his communicator buzz, but ignored it, the messages were never for him anyway. He had given up looking at it after a while, the messages just reinforcing the belief that everyone had forgotten about him and had moved on from him. Almost as if he had never been there in the first place.

He dismissed the buzzing of his communicator, looking out across the land. 

His whole being felt off, as if he were missing a part of himself, but after he had checked himself over, he concluded that the portal had just messed with his head a bit. Afterall, he didn’t know how far he had travelled, and had no way to find out. He gave up on pursuing the thread of thought, as it seemed to bring no value to him. 

He surveys the island he spawned on, looking around at the sand around him. It was small and was surrounded by a large expanse of water. He checked the chests around him, hoping to come across a boat, as he didn’t particularly feel like swimming to the closest island with trees, as most of them were far off into the distance.

He hits the jackpot as he rummages through another chest, retrieving a wooden boat. He shoves it into the water and boards it, beginning to row towards the nearest island, coming across a jungle island, which looked to have several houses nestled among the thick tree trunks of the biomes. There were several small houses, almost concealed within the thick foliage of the jungle, yet there were some massive builds, towering over the tops of the upper canopy of the trees, making him feel like an ant in comparison to their size.

He shifted around, glancing around himself before darting into the dark cover of the jungle. He moved with ease between the trunks, feeling at home in the darkness, able to almost slip into the shadows out of practice. He stalked between tree trunks, looking for a small house that looked abandoned.

He moved with stealth, brushing aside vines that blocked his face and dodged away from mobs, fear of whether their groans would attract other players. He gripped his iron sword, holding it in front of himself, glad that he was able to keep the items he had on him at the time, it wasn’t much, be he would take anything he could get currently.

He came across a door in the side of a hill, pushing it open with caution, aware that there was a possibility someone could be inside, he peeked through the doorway, caution lacing his bones.

The inside was covered in dust, small cobwebs beginning to form in the corners, it appeared uninhabited, leading him to believe that it was. Yet, for a house that was left abandoned it was in almost pristine condition, making him wonder what kind of people lived on this server.

Going through the chests he notes how well-stocked they appeared to be, almost as if the person had no chance to collect their stuff before abandoning the place. The chests were well sorted, organised in an easy-to-understand way. He rifled through each one, messing the chests up slightly and misplacing other items. He grabbed whatever he needed from the chests, stocking it away in his inventory before scurrying off to explore the rest of the home.

He moved between rooms, the house in the hill larger than he had originally pictured. Finding a small room, he hunkered down in there, beginning to sort through his inventory, clutching at the few stacks of golden apples he had snagged from the chests. He admired their golden surfaces before placing them back in his inventory. He glanced around the room he was in, noticing a bed in the corner.

He was suddenly hit with a wave of exhaustion. The events of the day finally catching up to him and making him weary, slightly dizzy from the onset of fatigue he stumbled over to the bed, laying down in it a curling up, falling asleep almost instantly.

He slept on, blissfully ignorant to the confusion he had sparked among the members of the server he was on, oblivious to the search they had sent out for the person who had joined their ranks. They weren’t hunting him, just concernedly looking for someone who they were not aware of until he joined. 

Yet Tommy slept on in peace.


	2. Chapter 2

Grian swooped low, wings boosting him along as he gave a few soft flaps, allowing him to hover just above the sea’s surface. He scanned the bottom of the sandy floor of the ocean, slightly distorted by the rippling waves. Seeing nothing but a few drowned, swimming just underneath the surface. They didn’t bother him as he hadn’t touched the water yet.

He pulled up, flying above the clouds, looking around the mountains nearby. He was the one who was able to cover the most land as he didn’t need rockets to allow him to fly. He circled several mountain tops, flying among the clouds and collecting water on his tri-coloured wings. 

He didn’t know where else he could look, the other hermits were searching the other islands, and he was left aimlessly circling around the server. He decided to go check around their older bases, the smaller ones that they had basically abandoned as soon as they had finished their permanent bases for the season.

He spiralled downwards, resolving to start in the jungle, as that was where the most hermits had started the season, they had compacted several into the area. It was rather crowded when they all lived there, they were constantly tripping over each other. But when they began to move out, moving elsewhere, it became more and more empty, until it was technically abandoned. The hermits would just occasionally pop into their old bases, collecting the items they need and then leaving instantly afterwards.

He landed lightly, bending his knees to cushion the impact. He looked around, realising how long he had gone without coming to this area. He walked over to his base, brushing his hand down the door, he pushed it open, noting how dusty the floors were, he also took note of the cobwebs in the corners. He really had not been there in a while.

He looked through his chests, noticing the lack of dust gathered on some, and the amount gathered on the lids of others. Maybe some other hermit had come in to borrow some items from his chests, not that he minded, the others were always welcome to borrow stuff, as long as they told him and either repaid it or replaced it.

He noted the missing items and resolved to question his friends when they regrouped. He hoped they had found the new player, TommyInnit, he thinks is his name. It was rather a unique name, though he felt he had heard it before. He didn’t know where he had heard of him from, but he hoped to find out.

He moved through the rooms, meticulously checking each corner for any sign of a person. He padded through the rooms, tucking his wings in behind himself to make himself smaller. Not that it was too much of a challenge, without the wings he was rather short, the wings just made him appear larger than he was with the impressive wingspan of thirty feet.

He made sure he was quiet, to ensure he wouldn’t scare the player off before he could speak with them. He worried his lip between his teeth, wondering why they had suddenly gotten a new addition to Hermitcraft, even Xisuma hadn’t known he was coming. He was sure that was impossible, he had never heard of a person joining a world without the permission of an admin. 

He moved into the next room over, having passed through four rooms already. He had forgotten how many rooms he had dug into the hill. 

He came into the final room of his house, it was by far the smallest one he had, only needing it for his bed and a few personal items. He enters the room, eyes instantly zeroing in the sleeping form huddled on his old bed. They were curled up, looking small, huddled underneath his red bedsheets.

His wings lowered slightly, not expecting the server ‘invader’ to be a skinny looking young, blond, kid. He was a child. He honestly did not expect to be searching for a blonde teenager, he had expected to be up against an aggressive professional.

This was kind of a shock if he was being honest, and he was just staring at this kid as he slept, standing in the doorway ominously. Realising how threating that could look to someone, he moved inside, plopping himself down on the floor, pulling his wings up higher behind himself to allow him to do so comfortably. 

He watched as the kid slept before deciding to gently wake him up, he didn’t want to startle him, so he gently touched his shoulder. What he didn’t expect was for the child to shoot up, revealing his face from where it had been hidden under the duvet.

The child grabbed his arm, twisting it behind his back and pinning him to the wall. Grian just lay there, face pressed against his own wall, squashed. He flapped his wings a bit causing the kid to flinch back. He frowned; he did not expect that reaction to a pair of wings. His arm was beginning to hurt, so he decided to speak up.

“Hey, uh, I would, really appreciate if you let go of my arm. It’s kinda starting to hurt.”

The kid hesitated, “Why would I do that, I don’t know you and have no reason to trust you. For all I know you could turn around and stab me.”

Grain winced, how would a child, no way over the age of sixteen, get that idea into their head. “I won’t stab you, I swear, I don’t do that to anyone, unless they ask.” He joked, hoping that would allow the kid to relax. It did the exact opposite, he tensed up and his breath hitched.

“That’s not funny, you should not just stab someone because they ask you to. You’ll kill them, they’d lose a canon life! That’s a horrible thing to joke about.” Grian had no idea what a ‘canon life’ was, he had never heard of them before.

“Could you just let me go? I swear I won’t stab you, promise.” The kid hesitated again, before releasing his arm, allowing him to turn around, smoothing his feathers down with one hand from where they were ruffled up from the confrontation.

He smiled at the child, “Hey, I’m Grian, who are you?”

The kid glared at him, moving until his back was pressed up against the wall opposite to him. “Tommy.” He replied shortly.

He realised at this point that he wasn’t going to be able to get many answers from this kid, he seemed closed off and resentful, he didn’t know who towards, but he knew that this child felt resentment towards someone, and that was never a good thing. A child should not be feeling anger like that towards anyone, they were meant to be living with their family until they were able to choose a world to live in themselves.

He pulled out his communicator, opening up a private chat and sending a short message off to the other, he receives a response and puts his communicator back away. He looks up to see Tommy staring him down from where he was pressed against the wall. His gaze was rather intimidating, most likely helped by his towering height, he looked at him, scaling him up and averaging that he was at least over six feet tall.

He heard someone arrive at the door to the room they were stood in, and both of their gazes snapped to the person, Mumbo stood in the doorway, ducking his head a bit to fit under the doorway.

He walks into the room, moving over to where Grian is stood, and they all stand there, the three of them, unsure on how to proceed. Mumbo makes the first move. He sticks his hand out, “Hi, I’m Mumbo Jumbo, you can just call me Mumbo though.”

The boy trembled slightly, staring distrustfully at his hand, making Grian wonder, yet again, what had happened to the boy to make him so distrustful of anything and everything he meets. He glances over to Mumbo, who is still in his full netherite gear, fully maxed out on enchantments, with his sword sheathed at his hip. He then moves his gaze back to Tommy, the kid, who is probably not used to being shorter than anyone, and has no armour, and a battered looking iron sword hanging by his side.

He nudges Mumbo with his arm, “I think you’re making him nervous; you’ve got full netherite gear and a sword, he doesn’t. Take it off.” Mumbo rolls his eyes, but obviously sees the reason in his words, slipping the armour off and storing it in his inventory, he then unsheathes the sword, causing panic to briefly flash in Tommy’s eyes before he puts that away too.

He turns back to Tommy, extends his hand again and says, “Hello, sorry about that, I’m Mumbo.” This time Tommy takes his hand, tentatively grasping Mumbo’s and shaking it, his arm slightly trembling, though Grian cannot tell whether it is out of fear or from the strain of holding his arm up like that. The kid is basically skin and bones, leading Grian to wonder about how he got into that condition in the first place.

It suddenly clicks for him where a few of his items had disappeared to, he had been confused about how it was mainly food items, knowing full well that his friends had mob farms of their own. He concluded that Tommy had stolen the few stacks of steak, and weirdly enough, golden apples.

Tommy has shifted back slightly more, before his eye seemingly is drawn to something. Following his gaze, they both look down at, Mumbo’s elytra? Had he not seen one before, from what he had heard they were in fairly common use for non-Avians, which this kid appeared to be, but he knew looks could be deceiving.

“Never seen an elytra before?” Tommy flinches back, as if he was prepared for some kind of punishment.

“No, uh, my admin banned the, uh, the End.” He responded, almost in a whisper. Grian’s eyes widened, he didn’t think he knew any admin that would want to ban the End, let alone have the power to do so.

“Oh, well, it’s not banned here, so if you stay, you can go, I guess?” His eyes widened, glancing between the two, which puzzled Grian.

“So, you won’t kill me?” Where on earth had he gotten that notion from.

“No? I told you earlier I wasn’t going to stab you.”

“There are more ways to kill someone than stabbing.” And alright, that is true, but he didn’t expect him to be so cautious. He begins to move out of the room, Mumbo walking just in front of him. He glances over his shoulder to Tommy, gesturing for him to follow. He does so quickly, stumbling over his own feet in his haste, almost falling over before righting himself and hurrying after the two.

He feels as if there is something off about the boy, he can’t quite put his finger on it, he just feels like Tommy is…incomplete? He supposes he could say, it’s just that there is something seemingly missing from him, setting his whole being off. And Grian can’t quite put his finger on what.

He realises that they’ll have to boat back to their meeting spot, as Tommy doesn’t have a pair of elytra, yet, or wings, so flight is out of the option.

He moves to the shore, pushing two boats into the water, mumbo getting into one and immediately beginning to boat back to their meeting point, Grian is left with a sullen Tommy. He climbs into the boat carefully and watches as Tommy sits down with a small thud, rocking the boat slightly. He picks up the oars and begins to row, bringing them back to the meeting, where he knows all the other hermits will be gathered, as he watched Mumbo type on his communicator and felt his own buzz.

He doesn’t know if Tommy has one, he hasn’t seen him pull one out, despite it probably being registered to their world now, and the notifications would be coming through, yet he seems to be ignoring it.

He rows faster, in an attempt to catch up to Mumbo, it works, kind of, he moves next to Mumbo who immediately moves faster, as if Grian had instigated a challenge. They begin to race back to their meeting point in the Shopping District.

They bump up against the mycelium shore, climbing out of the boats with little difficulty, they begin to walk towards the District, where the others have gathered. Tommy trails behind them fidgeting with his hands as they move closer and begin hearing sounds of other life. Mumbo walks a bit in front and Grian drops back to walk besides Tommy, allowing Mumbo to go ahead and inform Xisuma of the situation.

Tommy glances up at him as he begins to walk next to him, then looks back down to his shoes, down at the mycelium. The hermits stare at them as they approach, and Grian feels the feathers on his wings begin to fluff up, despite knowing the gaze wasn’t directed at him. He made an effort to smooth them down with just his mental willpower, which seemed to work, partially.

Xisuma stepped forward, helmet firmly on their head, concealing their face completely. This is the moment when Tommy chooses to look up, making eye contact with the helmet and the blood completely draining from his face.

He whispers a name under his breath, one that sounded suspiciously like ‘Dream’. He knew Dream, he was that really good fighter, in the same sort of leagues as Technoblade. If he was being honest, he found Techno more interesting than Dream, the guy just seemed like a bit of a stuck-up prick. He knew he had a server of his own, the Dream SMP. No one really knew what went on, on there. He considered the fact that Tommy was in fact from there, explaining absolutely nothing to Grian, but it was a start to unravelling the mysteries surrounding him.

The kid had continued to back away, muttering a litany of pleas under his breath. He didn’t understand why the kid was so scared, he looked back to Xisuma, thinking of any correlations between anything or anyone the kid might have encountered. It clicked, he flared his wings out in front of Xisuma, blocking Tommy from view, and surprising most of the people there.

He hurried to explain, “I think it’s your mask, I have a feeling Tommy,” he pointed his thumb over his shoulder at him, “is from the Dream SMP, you know, the one Dream owns. The guy that constantly wears a mask, concealing his face kinda like that.” He gestures to Xisuma’s helmet. He seems to understand, as he begins to back away.

He turns back to Tommy, a reassuring smile on his face and wings still partially blocking him from the rest of the hermits.

“How would you feel like staying the night at my place?” he offers, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Xisuma is okay with it, not that he’d listen if he weren’t because this is a child, he feels an obligation to look after him. Hoping to do a better job than whoever came before him, because, by the looks of things, it was a pretty terrible job.

Tommy nods, hesitantly accepting his offer. Grian nods in return then begins marching back over to the boats, followed by a fast Tommy. They get in the same boat again and rapidly depart. Grian wanting to be away from the curious faces of the other hermits, and feeling that Tommy is most likely feeling the same.

He rows, beginning the, longer than if he were flying, journey back to his base. Tommy sat slightly closer to him in the boat than before.

It was progress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come shout at me on Tumblr, or in the comments below! I wanna know what you think! 
> 
> Tumblr: http://inky-starss.tumblr.com


	3. Chapter 3

Tommy watched the winged person in front of him. He didn’t know whether to trust him or not, on the one hand he had gotten him out of the awkward situation with all the other people back there, however, he also seemed to be extremely smart, figuring Tommy out in almost an instant. That would not be helpful if he wanted to keep to himself.

Grian rowed, seemingly knowing where he was going, they sat in silence, the splashing of water against the boat and near silent groans of the drowned the only noises around. He sat, slightly uneasy, as it was just him and Grian, with no one else around. He seemed nice at least, but so did the others, and look where that got him. Sat in a boat with a near-total stranger sat across from him, taking him to his house. He was sure he had been warned against this at one point or another, but he ignored that niggling thought, pushing it to the back of his head.

They pulled up to an island with several structures on it, one of the largest being a massive mansion structure. How it hadn’t been griefed or blown up yet amazed him. A structure like that would never have been finished, let alone left intact. I mean, look at L’Manburg, that got blown up twice, and it got left, just like that, with massive craters everywhere.

He didn’t know how they hadn’t broken out into war or politics yet, they could barely go a month where he was from, but maybe things were different here. Not that he cared, this was just a place to get away from Dream. Nothing on this server mattered to him.

Looking around, he realised there wasn’t only the mansion base, there was also a massive drill off in the distance, in the same jungle biome, then further off there was a large dark structure in a desert. 

The sun was beginning to set, the orange glow dipping towards the horizon, as Grian hurried ahead, wings pulled tight behind him. It looked rather uncomfortable to keep them so compacted. Tommy had seen how large they truly were, and this dude was keeping them all tucked up as it they were a measly ten-foot wingspan, not an over twenty-foot one.

He would have understood if they were on the Dream SMP, nobody there was friendly to any kind of hybrid, either you were trying to hide that you were one by hating them or you were trying to get into Dream’s favour. He only knew a few people who hadn’t bothered to conceal their status as a hybrid. Schlatt had massive ram horns, those would not be easy to hide he reasoned, and neither would be being a piglin hybrid like Technoblade, Ranboo also wouldn’t be able to easily conceal it, being half and half, enderman and something else. Nobody really knew, including Ranboo himself.

He’d had his suspicions about others being hybrids, but they either weren’t or were extremely good at hiding it from everyone else.

He stared up at the imposing mansion, remembering seeing it earlier when he had hidden in what he presumed to be Grian’s old base. The massive structure was topped with prismarine, he didn’t know how Grian had gotten his hands on that much, but he did know that it looked really pretty, and he wanted to touch it at some point.

He jolted as Grian touched his shoulder, bringing him out of his reverie for the building. Grian snapped his hand back as if he had been shocked too, they both looked at each other for a second before Grian lowered his hand back down to his side and began to walk in. He called over his shoulder for Tommy to follow.

Walking inside he saw more riches than he had ever seen in his life, a complex redstone machine, sorting items as Grian dropped them into a chest. He had never understood redstone, but he held a respect for those who did, knowing that they had the ability to change how the world functioned with a few levers and a bit of redstone dust.

He followed after Grian, feeling slightly lost in the massive house he was in. It was a long throw from where he had lived previously, in his small tent in Logstedshire. It had been small, and torn, and dirty, but it had also been all he had. Dream gave it to him, so he had to be grateful, because Dream was his friend.

‘Was he though’ his traitorous mind whispered to him, ‘he treated you badly, and he would only ever call you his friend if he wanted something.’

Tommy shook his head, wanting to get rid of the thoughts, gripping his hair slightly and tugging, which seemed to do the trick. He looked up to see Grian watching him with a look of concern.

“You good there?” Tommy nodded, not wanting Grain to pry further into his life than he already had. “If you say so, uh, this is where you can stay the night. It isn’t much, because I wasn’t expecting visitors so soon, but you’re welcome to stay as long as you need.”

Not much, Tommy scoffed, this was one of the largest rooms he had seen in his life, and it wasn’t even ‘finished’ yet, whatever that meant. The bed looked plush, almost stretching along a whole wall in its size, the duvets red. This Grian seemed to like the colour red, at least he was staying with a person of taste he supposes.

“Thanks.” He mutters, not noticing the way Grian smiles in return, glad to have gotten a response from him.

“No problem just be sure to send me a message on your communicator if you need anything or get lost. This place is rather large.” He chuckles awkwardly to himself, not sure how to end their conversation.

He walks backwards out of the room, almost hitting the doorframe on the way out, making Tommy disguise a laugh as a cough. The door shut behind him.

He turned back to the bed, falling face first onto the covers, almost sinking into them completely with how soft they were. He rolled over onto the bed, staring at the ceiling, closing his eyes and trying to sleep. He hoped everyone back home was alright.

…

Tubbo sat down at his desk, feeling small in the large chair. He felt numb, empty inside, but also as if he were overflowing with emotions, like an overly full cup. He knows about having a half-empty cup and a half-full cup, but what do you do when it overflows so much that you’re left with nothing?

He stared down at the desk, where two great-ish presidents had sat before him. Wilbur, the one who was exiled and went crazy with the strain of trying to re-enter his own country, ending in blowing it all to pieces, and Schlatt the alcoholic president, who had executed him and died of a heart attack before ‘Manburg’ had been reclaimed and then blown to smithereens, leaving Tubbo as the president of a crater.

What would he be know for? Probably as the president who betrayed his only friend, went behind the back of his own cabinet to exile one of their members, all because he was too much of a coward to face another war.

He heard a knock at the door, and looked up to see Dream entering the room, mask ever-present on his face. Dream moved over to the desk, sitting down in the chair in front of it, and gazing across at Tubbo.

He placed a hand over his, most likely in an attempt to be consoling, almost as if he could sense the grief rolling off of the child president in waves.

“You did the right thing you know.” Tubbo looked up, small stubs of horns catching the light, ears lowering in dismay.

“What.” He whispered, “I exiled him, he’s dead because of me.” He broke off, a choked back sob lingering in his throat.

“He’s dead because he made his own choices, Tubbo. He’s dead because he did one of the many things that he simply cannot do as a vice president. Tommy is dead because he decided he didn’t want to be alive anymore Tubbo. It’s not your fault, and it’s not his either, he just made some…misguided choices, that led to his untimely demise.”

Tubbo didn’t know how to respond to that, he just stared at the mask as his eyes welled up with tears, he stared at the mask as it began to move, blurred through the tears in his eyes, and the tears running down his face, his chest heaving with harsh sobs.

He sits there, mourning his best friend as Dream places a comforting hand on his shoulder, standing behind the president, attaching his strings to his new tool. He may have lost Tommy, but he had gained power over the president of his opposition, which was arguably more useful. Sure, Tommy had been fun to mess with, fun to deceive, fun to destroy and permanently cripple. But he was one person, this was a whole country, weighing upon a child’s shoulders, and he was ready to lift that weight, before he destroyed it.

A smile split the skin under his mask. Everything was going well.

…

Grian pottered around his base, sorting through his chests outside in the early morning light. He always enjoyed waking up with the sun, he was able to watch as it rose, casting its golden rays across the land. It was a relaxing thing to do, allowing him to wake up fully and be at ease with the world around him.

He moved from outside back to the inside, ensuring that his item sorter was working before continuing on through the hallways.

“Grian! What the actual fuck, did you do to me!” Well, there goes his peaceful morning, he begins to trail through the castle, in search of where Tommy’s voice had come from. He didn’t particularly like the blonde’s use of swear words, but he would excuse it this once, as he had spoken to him, he didn’t want to discourage that.

He moved into the room he had given Tommy last night, stopping just in front of the doorway as he took in the scene in front of him.

Tommy stood, obviously having just woken up, his head mussed up from sleep, and…feathers, on the ground, scattered around, having fallen from the massive wings on the child’s back. The massive magpie wings that had most certainly not been there the day before, as he would not have been able to cover those wings up, especially not with that ratty blood-stained trench coat he wore, weirdly with a hole torn in the back.

They both stood, staring at each other, not exactly knowing what to do with this new development. 

“What the fuck did you do to me Grian.” Tommy repeated, tone dangerously low. Grain began to back away hands out in front of him placatingly, “I did not do that I swear, I don’t know what you’ve heard about Avians, but you cannot just suddenly sprout wings out of nowhere if you touch one.”

“What was that electric shock yesterday then.” He made a good point, he had never felt an electric shock like that, sure he had been shocked before, but the electric from that was softer, slightly warm, but not overwhelmingly so.

“Would you be willing to visit Xisuma? The one with the helmet, he won’t hurt you, I promise.” Tommy stood there, wings awkwardly hanging in a way that Grian was sure was uncomfortable as he considered the offer.

“He’s the admin here right?” Grian nodded, “fine, let’s go.” Grain turned and walked out the door, watching as Tommy follows behind him, smoothing his hair down as he went, most likely trying to make himself presentable for the admin who he had not made the best first impression on.

Grian exited his mansion and leapt into the air, wings beating downwards as he propelled himself into the sky. He then glanced down at the kid, who did not seem to know how to fly, standing looking up at him as he hovered.

He swooped back down, grabbing Tommy underneath his arms, and he was surprisingly light, even for an Avian. He moves them back up into the sky.

“You ready?” Tommy scrunches his face up in confusion, then worry as Grian begins to let go of him, giving him the height he needs to begin flying. He scrabbles, trying to hold onto Grian, which is sweet, but it’s starting to make his wings ache with the extra six-foot child hanging from them.

He drops him, watching, slightly worried as the kid plummets a bit, before righting himself and beginning to hesitantly fly. His flaps are a bit wonky, but he’ll leave that be. It’s his first time after all.

He propels himself back upwards, coming level with Grian, “That was a dick move, Grian.” And yeah, that was fair, he had just dropped him out of the sky, but he was still alive, it was fine.

“You’re fine though, which is the main thing. We should probably start heading to Xisuma’s base, he likes to start his day early, so we’ll need to get there quickly if we want to catch him.”

He ignores the mutters under Tommy’s breath, choosing instead to begin heading towards where he knew Xisuma’s base was. He flew off, Tommy still slightly wonky with him flying a short distance behind him.

He sighed, so much for a peaceful morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come shout at me on Tumblr, or in the comments below! I wanna know what you think! 
> 
> Tumblr: http://inky-starss.tumblr.com


	4. Chapter 4

Tommy was enjoying his flight in the sky, he would occasionally wobble and have to flap harder to remain in the air when the wind buffeted him a bit harder than normal, but other than that he was fine. They were going to see Xisuma, and he didn’t really know how to feel about that.

They flew over the treetops of the jungle, heading towards another base, the sun was barely up, and Tommy was annoyed at having woken up so early, he would normally sleep for hours after dawn, only waking when necessary. He blinked his eyes, forcing them open. He realised he had drifted a bit lower, flapping his wings he caught up with Grian, gliding along beside him.

Despite his earlier shock in regard to his ‘feather problem’ he was beginning to appreciate the wings for what they were. They didn’t glint in the sun the same way that Grian’s did, his feathers messy and out of place, some broken and almost falling out. He grimaced at the state of the wings, figuring that they weren’t meant to be that dishevelled. 

He watches as Grian swoops down, soon following suit as he dives after him, heading to a base, and in through a yellow and black door. He follows behind, landing softly, bending his knees as if on instinct, to cushion the landing. He tucks his wings behind him neatly, fluffing the feathers up to hide the disarray his feathers were in.

Grian calls out for his admin, “Xisuma! We’re here! Are you here?” Tommy winces at the brash way Grian addresses his admin, isn’t he scared of the repercussions? He could lose one of his lives if he kept talking like that. He didn’t understand these people.

Xisuma walked into the room, wearing his weird bee suit, at least, he thinks it was a bee, he couldn’t be sure though. He, however, was not wearing his helmet, revealing a face underneath dotted with freckles that sparkled like constellations, and eyes that swum with darkness. Those same eyes widened as he made eye contact, instantly averting his eyes and bringing a hand up to cover his face.

“Sorry,” he apologised, “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon, after the whole…incident.” He looked sincerely apologetic from what Tommy could see of his face. He hurried to reassure him, trying to not upset the admin who held a considerable amount of power over him.

“No, no. It’s, uh, it’s fine, I swear. You just reminded me of…someone, that I’d, uh, rather not think of right now.” He grimaced at the stilted apology, the words falling hesitantly from his lips. “You can, uh, also uncover your face, I don’t mind y’know.”

Xisuma uncovers his face, turning back around, which is when Tommy noticed that the freckles were literally constellations, creating the different star formations over his cheeks and nose. 

Grian stepped forward, towards the admin, “We’re actually here about something else. I was wondering whether you would be able to look at Tommy’s code?”

“Tommy? Is that your name?” He glances over at Tommy, who nods quickly in return, “sure, I can look at your code.”

He pulls up a light-yellow screen, highly different to the lime green of Dream’s admin panels. He taps a few things that only his eyes can see, scanning over what he presumes are several lines of code.

“I’m assuming this is about the magpie wings?” he glances over, looking up from his lines of code. His face is illuminated by the soft glow his panels give off. His eyes reflect the light, causing his eyes to shine, almost in the way a cat’s would.

He nods in response to the admin’s question.

Xisuma returns his gaze to the panels, scanning over several lines of code. Still reading he begins to explain, “Okay, so from what I’m reading, there was a code block put on your wings which prevented them from manifesting. There were a few errors in this code, suggesting it was either done in a hurry, which is the most likely as you can only begin to edit code once the person is on the world. They were most likely preventing the number of memories they would have to rewrite, as that can be extremely difficult and tedious, but rather,” he taps a few things on screen, “easy to undo.” He punctuates the end of his sentence by hitting a button on his panel.

Tommy gasps, almost keeling over with the waves of things that wash over him, conflicting with his existing memories. The colours in the new memories seem more full than his old ones, revealing details to him that he hadn’t noticed before, namely the pair of fucking wings he had always had, then mysteriously disappeared after he joined the Dream SMP.

He fell to the floor, knees hitting the wood underneath him with a dull thud, causing a spark of pain to shoot up his legs. His wings sag behind him, almost completely on the floor as he watches his own memories, the one thing he thought couldn’t be messed with, be rewritten in front of his very own eyes.

He looks up, wide eyes peering to Xisuma for answers. Both of the adults are just stood there, hands awkwardly fidgeting by their sides, as if they didn’t know how to help the kid having an existential crisis on the floor.

“So,” he stutters out, after a few minutes of silence, “that’s a thing that just happened.” He let out a weak laugh, disbelieving the hilarity of the situation. Xisuma glances to Grian before opening his mouth.

“Um, as I was saying. I presume the messy code is due to a hurry and not a lack of expertise, but this made it so that as soon as you came into physical contact with another Avian, such as our lovely Grian here,” he gestured to the man next to him as if Tommy hadn’t stayed the night at his place, “meaning that as soon as that happened, the code would start to unravel, probably coming completely undone in a few hours.”

Tommy knelt on the floor, letting the new information wash over him, he was an Avian, this wasn’t coming undone, and Dream had been the one to mess with his and everyone else’s heads.

He was a bit pissed if he was honest. Dream had decided that he wasn’t going to allow Tommy to keep his memories, to keep his wings. And he thought it was for the best? Knowing Dream and his way of wording things he probably did want Tommy to think that, but it was more likely to just be a kind of sick power play against him.

Dream probably found it amusing, that he knew a whole other part of Tommy existed when Tommy himself didn’t. He clenched his fist tighter, then instantly relaxed, wincing at the crescent shaped indents in his palm his fingernails had created.

Grian was by the entrance to the home, beckoning for Tommy to follow. He got up quickly, wanting to see how Grian took off, in the hopes he could mimic it. He watched as Grian stepped out of the door and plummeted a few feet before spreading his wings out and catching an air current. He gets boosted upwards, pulled by the force of the air.

Tommy takes a deep breath and steps out. He feels the wind rushing past his face, tousling his hair and stroking his face. He opens his eyes as he opens his wings out. The sudden resistant force causing a small crack to echo in the area around Tommy. He marvels at the way his wings keep him afloat. 

It was quite impressive that a bit of flesh, bones and feathers was able to keep his whole being in the air. He’d have to ask Grian more about Avians as he was curious as to what the ma knew. He knew near to nothing himself so any information would be good.

He takes off after Grian who has begun to fly, presumably, back towards his base, wings boosting him forward. He says presumably as there are so many unfamiliar bases scattered around the jungle that Grian could be heading to any one of them.

He swoops up into the sky, doing arcs and loops, admiring the strength in his wings, despite having been hidden for at least a few years. He would have expected the muscles to have been in the same condition as his feathers, which was not good. He doubted he would have been able to lift himself off the ground if they had wasted away in the same manner.

“You know you’ll tire yourself out if you do that too much right?” he startles slightly, spreading his wings out more, causing him to be caught by an opposing air current and flung back. Righting himself, he boosts forward to fly beside Grian.

“Yeah, but having wings is pretty pog.” He almost laughs at the confused look that crosses Grian’s face at the new word. He thought they might not have heard it before, which was one of the reasons he used it there.

“Pog.” Grian repeated, in a perfect imitation of Tommy’s voice. Tommy swerves away a bit from him, surprised at the sound of his own voice coming from someone else’s mouth.

“I’m sorry, but what the fuck was that.” He questioned, Grian smirked, beginning to dive down to his base. Tommy has no choice but to follow him, tucking his wings and plummeting downwards, pulling up at the last second to land neatly. He tucks his wings behind his back, hurrying after Grian.

“Hey!” he calls, “You didn’t answer my question! What did you just do with your voice?” Grian keeps walking as if he hadn’t heard Tommy, but Tommy can see the way his eyes occasionally glance back at him, lips curling into a smile when he thinks Tommy isn’t looking.

He catches up to him, putting a hand on his shoulder and twisting him around rather easily. Grian laughs at his confused face, which causes Tommy to wrinkle his face in confusion before Grian grabs his arm, tugging it, before dropping it and continuing walking.

“I thought we would go to my bird room to have this conversation.” He states, still walking away from him, faster despite being almost a whole foot shorter than him. He hurries to catch up, feathers ruffling slightly in his frustration. 

He follows Grian into a glass room, near to the top of his mansion. The sunlight streams in, refracting through the glass, creating colours in swirls on the floor. Looking around he notices a few parrots perched on shelves around him. They sit, seemingly content as Grian goes around and gives a few seeds to each.

He finishes his task and plops himself down onto a rug in the centre of the room. He pats the space next to him, and Tommy sist down besides him, shuffling his wings slightly awkwardly to make it comfortable.

“Okay. I know you have questions, but let me go through a few things first, see how many questions I can eliminate.” He glances to Tommy for confirmation. Tommy nods and watches as Grian begins to sort his wings out, watching the motions to try and remember how to do it himself.

“Basically, Avians are a specific line of shapeshifter, we descended from the original shapeshifter race, most of which were later hunted to extinction, causing a lack in numbers, but a few still remain.” He paused for a breath, untangling a knot of feathers as he did so, “because we’re descended from shapeshifters, it means that we, as a species are also shapeshifters, obviously our powers aren’t as broad as theirs, being able to only change into the one species we have traits of.”

Tommy nodded, that made sense to him. “because we aren’t full shapeshifters it also means we aren’t able to completely remove any traits of being no-humans, such as mine and your wings. Or any other species, it can vary from species-to-species what traits are visible and even then it varies on what traits people inherit, except for Avians, them always have wings. You either are or you aren’t.” 

That makes sense to Tommy, but it still hasn’t answered his question, “You still haven’t answered my question on how you mimicked my voice like that.”

“Ah, um, yes. That’s a specific trait of parrot Avians, like I am. I’m a scarlet macaw Avian. And as most people know, a rather defining trait of parrots is that they can mimic things, this extends to me as well. Most species will have powers, and there are variants within the subsection of the species, like you will have the Hydros, who are the water-based shapeshifters, and they can have abilities ranging from communication between fish to night vison, as it is rather dark underwater. And within Avians, we obviously have the subsections of bird types, mine being a parrot, and yours being a magpie.”

“Okay… so what are the likely abilities that I could inherit?”

“Well, many crow and magpie Avians, generally ones that are attracted to shiny objects, such as gold or diamonds, seem to find themselves proficient in finding ores. However, the proficiency between certain ores can vary. There are always downsides to the amazing powers, as some parrot Avians, when they ‘lose’ their voice, means they can only mimic whatever others say, this won’t ever last permanently though.”

“Has that ever happened to you?” Grian went slightly red and muttered something under his breath.

“Uh, yes, during my first week on this server, people were almost constantly coming to see me, as they had never met an Avian before. This meant that I overused the mimic ability a lot, and then made it so that I could only mimic others for a few weeks.” Tommy felt a bit bad for the man, that did not sound fun, “What did you do?”

“Well, during the second week of it I went and stayed with my friend, Mumbo, you met him when you were just in my old house, as he was my only friend at the time. He found a bit of amusement within it but mostly left me to it during that week.”

Tommy nodded, one more question remaining. “Do you know what happens if I overuse my ability?”

Grian looked over to him, “Well I’ve heard that they can be extremely possessive over anything they deem of value, but magpies are one of the oldest subspecies, meaning you’d have to try really hard to get that far deep without some kind of intervention.”

That made sense to Tommy, not that he would overuse his powers. It would just be rather helpful to finding valuable items.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come shout at me on Tumblr, or in the comments below! I wanna know what you think! 
> 
> Tumblr: http://inky-starss.tumblr.com


	5. Chapter 5

Tubbo sat at his desk, horns curling around his face, framing it as the light streams in behind him. The growth of the stubs had accelerated over the two days he had spent consulting Dream, leading to how large they were now. They weighed his head down, both metaphorically and literally. The horns invoked fear into the citizens on the street, Tubbo looking a mirror image of Schlatt as he moves down the cobbles, inspecting the area around him. They no longer approach him as they had before, their gazes darkening as they turn away, huddling into their small groups.

Tubbo misses their company, but it’s fine, he has Dream now, and Dream is his friend, otherwise Dream wouldn’t be helping him, wouldn’t be teaching him how to properly rule over L’Manburg.

And he was grateful, strolling through the streets, a crown of thorns sat circled upon his brow. The strings of the puppet master trailing from his shoulders.

Because Dream was his friend, why else would he be here.

…

Dream watched, as Tommy twisted and turned through the sky, showing off the glimmering of his feathers. He clenched his fist, mask creating a façade of calm. Underneath he was seething. All his hard work, all his coding, undone within a day of Tommy leaving the server.

This was why the Dream SMP was closed. It was a place people like Tommy and Tubbo and Ranboo, and all the other misfits of society came. They came looking for a supposed haven, one that did not exist. Dream would keep them here, away from the rest of the world. The way Dream preferred it, the beings of mass power, subdued and repressed, kept in one place.

And that was not going to be ruined by a young child, one that he had wanted to keep under lock and key for a reason. He kept them here for a reason, and that was about to be undone by the prying eyes of a distant admin.

That wasn’t going to happen.

…

Tommy swiftly snatched the sword out of the sky, from where he had thrown it, grabbing the fake and moving to disarm his opponent. They danced around each other, striking with opportunity and blocking with necessity. He grinned to himself, arching up into the air over Grian’s head, striking him in the back as they flew, thousands of meters above the ground.

Grian brought his hands up I surrender, admitting defeat.

“You’ve gotten good at that, I know that most Avians are good at aerial combat, but that’s pretty amazing for only a few days of practice.”

Tommy grinned, proud of himself, “Well, you should only expect the best from me, I am after all, the biggest man here.” He laughed at his own confidence, relishing in the feeling of freedom, the one that he hadn’t felt in so long. Probably since he had joined the Dream SMP. It made him wonder how interconnected his being was with his wings. They landed on the ground, storing their weapons in the weapons’ shed. Grian turned to him as he locked the door, having gone through the motions so many times that he could do it without looking.

“How would you feel about trying a full-shift. It’s useful in certain situations, giving you a chance to change, confuse your opponent and change back again. I’ve used it in combat before, it’s always fun to do.”

Tommy felt his heart soar, excitement at the prospect of a new skill, “Yes, please. I would love to do that. That sounds so fuckin’ cool!”

Grian winced a little at the volume he was talking at, but it was understandable. Shifting was a new thing to him, he hadn’t shown him how to shift or even shifted since Tommy had begun living in the mansion with him. Not that he minded, he planned on showing him the basics of aerial combat before showing him how to shift. It would ensure that he was able to control himself in the air, which would lead to a better control of the shift.

He led the way back up to the bird room, reasoning that it was the ‘bird room’ for a reason. Sitting back on the carpet, and Tommy sitting across from him he settled down, preparing himself to sit for a while. He fidgeted with the tassels on the carpet, rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb.

He looks at the child across from him, taking in the fact that Tommy is a child for the millionth time. He’s a child who has too many scars stretching across his body for someone his age, he flinches too much at sudden movement for his age. All the small things that he expresses that shows he was forced to grow up too soon, forced to do something he shouldn’t have needed to. It makes him want to wrap him up in his wings, to make sure that the rest of the world won’t harm him as they already have.

He averted his gaze from the staring competition, “What we first need to do is to become completely in sync with the way your Avian part of you is. Meaning we focus on our wings, and the parts that are Avian given within our minds. Some people like to close their eyes to focus, others don’t. It depends on the person.”

He closed his eyes and evened out his breathing, hoping Tommy was doing the same. “You have to imagine yourself as your Avian counterpart, so you need to be able to see the bird in some way in your mind. This helps show your body what you want to do. With practice all you need to do is imagine yourself as a bird, and poof, bird.”

To demonstrate he pictured a scarlet macaw in his mind’s eye, and when he opened them again, he was a parrot. Moving around a little to become more accustomed to the feeling again after not being in this form for a while. He moves to sit on the shelves among his other parrots, watching as Tommy focuses. He sees how hard he appears to be concentrating from the slight wrinkle on his brow.

He then seems to relax, all the muscles in his body going from tense to lax, just before his form is concealed by a small cloud of magic. No one actually knows what it looks like between forms when shapeshifting, as it is always concealed by a cloud of magic, no matter how close you are to the person in question.

Most decided that it was hidden for a reason and left things be. Watching as Tommy squints his eyes open, then fully opens them as he realises he did it.

He looks around the room, probably for Grian, who sits on the shelf, wondering whether Tommy will notice the difference in the number of parrots on his shelf. Tommy cocks his head, in the unique way that only animals seem to be able to emulate. Hopping from foot to foot, testing out his new form, he begins to stretch his wings out.

Taking flight from the floor in a well-practiced motion, he begins to glide around the room, scanning the shelves with a critical eye. Coming to Grian’s shelf he lands on the edge, clutching it between his feet. He stares at Grian until he admits defeat, fluttering off his shelf and swooping out of the doorway in the glass dome.

He moves out into the open air, landing on top of the glass dome and admiring the sunset. He watches as the sky is painted into several hues of colour, almost as if a painter is washing the sky out, adding more and more layers of pigment to the horizon.

He glances over as the magpie lands next to him, tapping on the glass with one foot. He glances down, realising that the glass has turned golden in the sun’s light. Tommy was probably more in-tune with the finer instincts of magpies at this moment, leading to his curiosity towards the golden-looking glass.

He would probably be better at finding ores. He still didn’t know which ones he had more of a proficiency for, but they would find that out at some point. Maybe they could do that today.

He moved back inside, shifting as he enters the room, landing on the floor as he returns to his normal form. Tommy follows him and shifts back too. He lands more awkwardly than Grian did, but as most things did, it would come with practice.

He turned to Tommy, flaring his wings slightly in excitement, “How would you feel about testing your ore proficiency? I know it can be with anything from coal to diamonds, and apparently ancient debris too. So, we’ll have to visit the nether and a few caves. Is that alright with you?”

“Yeah, that’s fine with me, as long as you don’t make me walk too far.”

He scoffed, “You say that as if we have to walk anywhere.” He dove out of the door, spreading his wings as he heads towards where he knows a mostly unexplored cave is. He hears Tommy jump out of the window behind him, wings opening with a snap and taking off after him. He moves swiftly, twisting between the vines and low hanging leaves of the under canopy of the jungle.

He dives downwards, into the open mouth of the cave, twisting sharply at the bottom of the entrance, moving down through the cave, tucking his wings slightly as he moves through the cave system. He reaches a pool of lava, landing shortly in front of it and tucking his wings securely behind his back.

He hears Tommy coming around the corner behind him and moves out of the way, wary of being accidentally shoved into lava. He watches as Tommy pulls to a sudden halt, noticing him stood by the lava. He lands quickly, shuffling his wings behind him, and looking at the sorry state of his wings Grain resolves to teach him how to properly preen and take care of them.

He looks over to Tommy, who is just stood there, staring at him.

“Would you like to shift? I’ve heard it’s easier that way and I can stay like this to prevent any mobs from going for you.”

Tommy squints his eyes at him, his mental debate visible on his face before he stares him straight in the eyes and shifts just like that. He was rather surprised by that as it can normally take a bit longer to completely get a hold of shifting. Tommy is just full of surprises he supposes.

He holds his arm out for Tommy to land on, and he does so. Grian begins to move through the cave, deeming it around the right level for any kinds of ore. They wander for a while, moving around the occasional lava pools on their journey. 

Tommy’s head suddenly swivels around, pushing off of Grian’s arm to take flight, darting towards a cave wall. He hovers in front of the wall, expectantly looking back at Grian every now and again. He moves over to the wall, pulling his pickaxe out of his inventory and chipping away a bit of the stone. His eyes widen at the glimmer that is revealed, he chips away more stone, revealing a sizeable diamond vein that he wouldn’t have otherwise discovered. He mines the diamonds away, collecting twelve diamonds with his fortune three pickaxe. He stores them in his inventory to give to Tommy later.

They move further though the cave system, collecting more and more diamonds as they continue along. He doesn’t seem to be able to sense anything other than diamonds, but his eye is regularly caught by the shiny ore of gold and redstone. They come to the end of the cave system, which Tommy takes as his cue to shift back. He lands on his feet, more coordinated than before. 

“Race you back.” He dared, Grian’s eyes narrowed, propelling himself into the air, thankful that they’re in a high-ceilinged cavern.

He moves down the cave system, past the torches he had placed at regular intervals to guide him back to the surface. He ignores the small dark shape that darts past him, taking it to be a bat disturbed by their fast movements. 

He emerges from the caves, feeling proud of himself for winning and shooting up in the air, before he sees Tommy waiting by a nearby tree, leaned casually against it with his arms folded and smirking at him. He realises then that the small, dark shape he saw dart past him was in-fact not a bat, it was Tommy, who had shifted mid-air.

“How on earth did you pick up fast shifting that quickly?” he was honestly confused but all Tommy gave him in return was a shrug. He sighed, writing it off as another of Tommy’s unusual quirks. He takes off in the direction of his nether portal.

He makes sure Tommy is close behind him as he darts through the portal and into the nether.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come shout at me on Tumblr, or in the comments below! I wanna know what you think! 
> 
> Tumblr: http://inky-starss.tumblr.com


	6. Chapter 6

Tommy balks as the heat from the nether washes over him. He forgot how stifling the heat could be. He lands, wary of the sudden gusts of air that can occur in the nether, not wanting to lose all his items and his last life to a pit of lava.

He laughs to himself; he had once seen the lava as the best way to lose his last life, now he was clinging desperately onto his last life, wanting to see how his home here would progress.

He still wants to meet the other players on the server, he had only met three of them, Grian, Mumbo and Xisuma. And he has only spent a large amount of time around Grian, the other’s meetings were in passing.

He tries to cast his mind back to his first day on the world, where he had been dragged to the mushroom island and mistaken Xisuma for Dream coming after him.

There had been quite a lot of other players stood behind him, but he was unable to identify any of the. That much didn’t surprise him, as he was never allowed to leave the Dream SMP after he joined it. He had realised soon after leaving that Dream was intending on keeping them all there, for some reason or another.

He looked around the nether hub, noting how much more professionally done it was then the one back on his old server. It looked like the effort had actually be put in, instead of a few hours to ensure you wouldn’t get killed on sight.

He turns to Grian, who is waiting, wings folded behind himself at one of the exits to the hub. He hurries over to him, tucking his wings tighter against his back and holding them there. As he reaches Grian he notices him holding several items in his arm, which is weird as you would normally just tuck shit like that away in his inventory. 

What Tommy didn’t expect was for the items to be unceremoniously shoved into his arms. He flinches slightly at the sudden movement but quickly steels himself, ignoring the concerned look Grian shoots him.

He examines the items in his arms, taking stock of what it is, a few fire resistance potions, a netherite pickaxe. Hold up, he glances up to Grian with wide eyes as he hurriedly tries to give him back the heavily enchanted netherite pickaxe.

“I cannot take this, that must have taken you days to obtain, it’s yours, not mine.” Thinking he’s succeeded he shoves it into Grian’s arms, tucking the rest of the items into his inventory.

“No. this one is for you, I have like, several others back in my house and two more on me right now.” Tommy stares up at him with wide eyes, several heavily enchanted netherite pickaxes, and he’s willing to give one to Tommy, most likely knowing he won’t get it back.

“I’m sorry, you have how many fuckin’ netherite picks. And you just leave them lying around? How can you be sure they won’t get stolen?” Tommy was confused, if you had something like that on the Dream SMP you would either constantly have it on you or in your enderchest.

“Why would someone steal it? We all have so many netherite items we wouldn’t need to steal, plus we have a no stealing policy.”

“Oh. Back on my old server you would normally wait for someone to grind for all their stuff, then you would steal it. Eventually someone else would steal it from you or the person you stole it from would come looking. Those conflicts would either end in death or a war. We had a lot of wars over there.”

“Yes,” Grian stated, “I’ve heard a bit about the Dream SMP, how it’s basically a prison once you get there. There have also been tales of permanent deaths, but I don’t believe that happens.”

Tommy laughed aloud at that, causing Grian’s head to swivel around to face him. His feathers began to ruffle up, probably in annoyance at the way Tommy just laughed at him, he breathed slowly through his nose, the fact that Grian didn’t know about his three lives was funny to him.

“What?” Grian snapped, slightly annoyed. That caused Tommy to sober up a bit more. “Nothing, nothing. It’s just the fact that people don’t know of the three canon lives rule, I find it absurd, imagine just dying and not knowing why you don’t come back.”

He laughed, but it was more of an exhale of air. “I’m on my last life, meaning next time I have a meaningful death I just don’t come back; the admin puts a block on me.” Seeing Grian’s worried expression he hastily backpedals, walking faster along the netherrack bridge they’re on.

“I mean, I can still come back as a ghost, but I won’t remember much, it’s actually more painful for the families of the person if you come back. I should know, my brother died, my dad stabbed him because he asked him to. Me and the whole country got to watch, at least he was able to blow it up though, that was the last thing he wanted to do.”

He looks up again, only realising Grian is no longer walking with him when he looks over. Glancing back over his shoulder he sees Grian, stood on the bridge, just staring at him. It’s kind of creepy, the way his face is so pale and his eyes so wide. He tells him so.

“What’s the matter? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” He laughs at his own joke as Grian sucks in a breath.

“You, your admin blocks you from respawning? He doesn’t let you come back after three meaningful deaths?” Tommy nods, which seems to worry Grian even more, “How do you decide what a meaningful death is? How is that fair at all?”

“Well, I mean, Dream decides, he is the admin after all, we all have to respect him, therefore, he gets to decide. No arguments either, or you lose another life then and there. He is the most powerful there, so we listen to him.”

“No. That’s not how it works, admins aren’t gods, they don’t get to decide whether or not someone, someone dies! That’s not how it works, you get infinite respawns, no matter how meaningful the death is, you don’t ‘lose a life’. That’s just not how it works.”

Tommy just looks at him, he feels sorry for the man, not knowing that his admin could end his life at any point. “I’m sure Xisuma might just not have told you, it’s fine you know. You’ve just got to be careful, you know?”

“No! No, I do not know Tommy, because that isn’t how it works. Dream, your admin, is abusing his power to manipulate those on his server. Admins aren’t allowed to do that, they’re given power because they’ve been deemed responsible for a whole world. Your admin could lose his privileges if it came out about what he’s been doing.”

Tommy balks, he had never thought that the normal parts of his world weren’t actually normal. The fact that ‘canon lives’ didn’t exist made his question why Wilbur was dead, and how it could have been prevented.

“Tell me Tommy, were you ever allowed to leave your world?” Tommy shakes his head, nobody’s meant to leave their world once they join it. He’s an exception.

“That’s not right, Tommy,” Grian sighs, shoulders slumping, “come on, let’s see if you can detect ancient debris with those powers of yours.”

He appears to have given up on the subject, shoulders creating a downward line.

…

Techno stood still, ignoring the hostile glares from the citizens of L’Manburg. He didn’t care, he was here for one reason, and one reason only.

He stares at the flowers, the wind twisting around their petals and brushing through the stiff fur on his face and making his eyes water. It was only the wind that made his eyes water.

He stands there, he doesn’t know how long he does so for. He stands and watches as Ghostbur moves past, followed by Phil. He sees as Tubbo walks to the flowers, laying a gentle hand upon them. He takes careful note of the person following him, and the crown of horns that rests heavy upon his head.

He doesn’t like the government, but he still feels sorry for Tubbo, the child president who didn’t want the position in the first place and was forced to exile his best friend, despite being ready to follow him to the ends of the earth.

He watched as Tubbo knelt on the cobblestone, Tommy’s favourite, and clutches something around his neck. He looks closer and sees a compass, almost identical to the one he saw Tommy wearing when he saw him in passing.

Tommy hadn’t seen him, Techno made sure of that, he had watched as the boy moved through the nether, and stood, staring down at the pool of lava, almost daring himself to step off of the edge.

Techno had left then, feeling as if he was intruding.

The cold wind brought him back to reality, sweeping through the coarse fur of his face, and whipping his eyes dry, removing all traces of tears.

He moves forward, brushing a hand over the oak wood, the oak wood where Tubbo had cried his heart out to his friend, the one he had promised to stand by, then sent away. His hooves tapped against the cobblestone ground as he comes to a stop underneath the shelter.

He’s alone here, he made sure everyone else left before he said his piece. He crouches, cape brushing against the cobble, catching on a loose piece sticking up from the smooth cut. He wiggles the piece around until it comes loose, holding it up close to his face, eyes tracing the sharp cut and jagged lines of the rock, roughly hewn from where it had originally been.

He sets it inside one of his pockets, the small fragment reminding him of Tommy. He sits down on the cobble in front of the slab, all of his energy leaving him in a rush. He stares, almost unseeing, ahead of him, watching the name carved into the stone, willing for it to change, for it to twist into another person’s name in front of his eyes.

He closes his eyes, removing his glasses before rubbing at his eyes. He had just wanted to retire, he had just wanted some peace. He had just wanted to settle down in the world he was stuck in for the rest of his life, and he wanted to live in quiet.

The letter had arrived a few days after he had finished his house. He remembers being distrustful of the government seal on the envelope, it being obvious who it was from. His curiosity had gotten the better of him a day later.

He had sat in front of his fire, Edward sat in his boat, holding his grass. Techno had broken the wax seal. He almost wishes he hadn’t. then he wouldn’t have to be faced with the stone in front of him. The stone that refused to change, refused to bend to his will.

He smoothed a hand over the stone face, releasing a sigh as he did so. He can feel the tears forming in his eyes, and he lets them form, he is finished with acting as if this hasn’t affected him.

They run down his cheeks, flattening the fur that grows there, slicking it down with the water from his eyes. 

He stares at the vase of flowers, roses. Such a simple flower, one that he knew Tommy hated, he couldn’t stand the implications of the rose.

And now it was sat by his grave. The grave of his baby brother who had abandoned him to form a new government.

He didn’t hold it against him. How could he?

His brother, his younger brother, one that was too young to fight in a war, one that was too young to have died.

He knew the three lives were bullshit, he had been on other servers before, and there was nothing about this. He knew Dream had done something. That Dream was to blame for what had happened to Tommy.

Dream was the reason.

Techno stood, cape sweeping across the ground. He pauses before he turns.

“I’m sorry Tommy.”

He walks away, back to his home, back to the empty solace he had created for himself, but should have opened for his family.

Resolve set his gaze.

He stopped, hearing Dream. Talking to the grave. 

Moving between the trees he listens to what Dream says.

“I don’t know where you’ve gone. I don’t know where that portal took you. But I know which admin is sheltering you, and I know how to get to him. Get ready Tommy, enjoy your life while it lasts, because if I have anything to say about it, it won’t last much longer. That’s a promise.”

He aims a kick at the vase, shattering it before storming away.

Techno moved in the other direction, Dream’s words running circles in his head.

He heads home, a plan beginning to form, aided by the voices calling for blood.

He would oblige 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for disappearing yesterday!
> 
> ...
> 
> Come shout at me on Tumblr, or in the comments below! I wanna know what you think! 
> 
> Tumblr: http://inky-starss.tumblr.com


	7. Chapter 7

Tommy trailed behind Grian, feeling as though he had annoyed the man in some way. He had only been trying to help, it wasn’t like he realised his whole world was being lied to.

The whole world. All of his friends that got left behind, that got left behind to deal with Dream. Who would undoubtedly manipulate them into doing something bad.

He felt a sudden sense of guilt, he could have stayed behind, he could have let Dream focus on him if he hadn’t left, sparing his friends from whatever Dream would do.

“Come on Tommy. I can feel you blaming yourself from a mile away back there.” He looks up realising Grian is several metres in front of him, at the entrance to some sort of mine. He speeds up his footsteps, drawing his wings into himself in his embarrassment. 

He reaches the entrance to the tunnel and looks down it. It stretches away, down and down into the hot earth of the nether. He looks back to Grian.

“Is this your netherite mine?”

“Yup, and we’re gonna go down it and see if you have any kind of affinity, quartz or netherite.”

Tommy nods, beginning to venture down into the tunnel. He steps down the stairs that have been put in and doesn’t have to duck his head as the ceiling has been fully carved out. He tucks his wings closer into his body again, wary of catching a wing on the netherrack surrounding him.

He sneezes as some of the ash from the nether gets into his nose. His feathers ruffle up slightly and he smooths them down quickly, rather frustrated that they keep fluffing up and ruffling, betraying every niche of his emotions.

If he’d had these on the Dream SMP he wouldn’t have lasted more than a few days, you needed to act like you weren’t scared, weren’t angry, that you had no emotions at all. And these wings would have betrayed him every time, ruffling up at the slightest annoyance.

He shifts again, still not used to the feeling it causes, moving as a swirl of feathers until his form consolidates as a magpie again. He swiftly lands on Grian’s outstretched arm, not eager to find out what the dust from netherrack would look like smeared over his black and white feathers.

He sits and waits, looking for the pulling feeling in his gut that would lead him to some ores. Grian walks down the twisting and turning hallways. They pass several chunks of gold embedded in the netherrack, which never fails to draw Tommy’s eyes, he focuses on those before he removes his mind from the shiny ore and focuses back on the task at hand.

He feels a small tug in his gut and perks up, head following the feeling and looking for the small silvery rope. Glancing around he soon notices it, leaping off from Grian’s arm and towards the rope. He hovers by the wall, waiting for Grian to dig away at the netherrack, which he does with relative ease.

He follows the rope, which is becoming thicker by the second, indicating that they’re close to whatever ore is buried deep beneath the earth. Grian chips away the last bit of netherrack concealing the ore and reveals a small vein of ancient debris.

Grian’s eyes widen slightly in surprise and Tommy leaps from his arm, shifting back and straightening up as his feet reach the ground.

“That’s pretty fucking cool wouldn’t you say Big G?”

“Big G?” Grian questions, turning slightly towards him as he mines the ancient debris.

“Yeah! That’s you, your name begins with a G, so, Big G.”

Grian laughs, collecting the last chunk of ancient debris. Tommy turns ready to head back out into the tunnel, away from the crudely hewn out cave they had been stood in.

“I think that’s enough mining for today, my pickaxe is rather low durability and we’ve got a lot of diamonds, and a few pieces of ancient debris too.”

“Yeah, I just want to sleep now.” Tommy agrees, “it seems like shifting a bunch really takes it out of you.”

“It does, it takes a lot of energy to compact yourself into a smaller form, there’s a bunch of science behind it all, mostly linking to the conservation of mass, which is almost completely impossible if you’re an Avian, as our shifted forms are a lot smaller than our regular ones.”

Tommy nods, “That makes sense, not that I really understand much about science, I never really cared for it.”

Grian laughs then, and Tommy’s glad that the man doesn’t seem to be angry anymore, whether he’s hidden it away or is truly no longer angry, Tommy can’t tell. He seems to be able to stop his wings from broadcasting his emotions. He should ask him how he does that at some point.

They move through the twisting labyrinth that is Grian’s netherite mine, he doesn’t know how the man navigates it, he seems to have some built in sense of which way to go, whilst Tommy is just lost, forced to trail behind him, wings sagging slightly in his exhaustion.

Moving through the tunnels bores him, the same dull red colour of the dried-out earth of the nether, deep cracks spider-webbing across the surface and carving deep into the hardened earth. His eyes are occasionally caught by the gold embedded in the earth, which frustrates him to no end. It’s easier to resist than when he’s shifted, which makes sense as Grian said when shifted that your senses would be heightened as that is the form they originate from.

The gold attracts his gaze once more and he gives in, breaking a small nugget from the earth. He holds it in the hand, ignoring the way the metal is slightly warm in his palm. He sees Grian looking at him, amusement on his face as he palms the gold. He makes a face at Grian, knowing full well that he has seen the man eating the seeds he gives his parrots more than once, no matter how many times he denies it.

They emerge onto the surface, quickening his pace, eager to get home, he moves across the bridge quickly, back to the nether hub. He still cannot get over how ornate the hub is, decorated nicely and built with care, a far stretch from his one back home.

But that wasn’t his home anymore, and he was happier for it, he didn’t think he would have lived much longer if he had stayed there.

He steps through the portal, the slight warping of the world making him a bit dizzy. As soon as he emerges into the overworld he leaps up into the air, spreading his wings and shooting high above the canopy of the trees. He hovers there, wings beating strongly as he gazes over his new home, the sun casting everything in gold as it dips towards the horizon.

He watches as Grian shoots up from the portal as well, his red jumper a blur in the sky, until he’s hovering next to Tommy. He looks at the setting sun for a bit, before diving to skim across the upper canopy, weaving between the trees that emerged from it.

Tommy dove after him, relishing in the cool air of the evening, as the moon began to rise into the air. He catches up to Grian quickly, and then swiftly overtakes him, grinning at the squawk from behind him. He swoops up into the sky, knowing that Grian would follow him.

He arcs over into a loop, coming face to face with him, before darting away, back to Grian’s house. More specifically back to the bird room. He twirls in the air, enjoying the way the wind whips his hair against his face and stirs his feathers.

He comes to an abrupt halt, tucking his wings to shoot through the door of the bird room and land. He stands there, out of breath, relishing in the adrenaline pumping through his veins as he waits for Grian to catch up with him.

Grian lands, slightly more out of breath than Tommy, but he looks up at Tommy, from where he’s moved to sit on the ground, preparing to preen his feathers.

Tommy moves to sit across from him, watching the way Grian expertly combs through his feathers. He watches, trying to memorise the motions when Grian looks up to him.

“Do you want me to show you how to do this? I’ve noticed your feathers are in a bit of disarray, which can’t be comfortable.”

Tommy nods, the itch in his wings deciding to make itself know again. He sits and listens as Grian explains how you are meant to keep your wings healthy, trying to follow along in the motions.

…

Dream sits in his house, because despite what Technoblade says, he does have one. It is just far away, hidden from sight and only accessible through admin commands, which only he has access to. This means that no one is able to enter his home, and he doesn’t plan on letting anyone else in anytime soon.

He has sensitive information in here, one that could bring the whole serving crashing down around him and have him stripped of his admin powers.

That was why the world was private, only accessible by permission, and one other way, but that one is long out of fashion, you would have to be as old as Dream was to be able to remember that. He moves over to his gallery, admiring the stolen items littering the walls. He brushes a hand over the pen of Henry and Friend, enjoying the way they cower in the corner, in fear of him as they should be.

He moves away from them, withdrawing his hand from the fencing. He paces over to the wall, admiring the items hung on there, most of their owners’ not even knowing the items even existed. 

He brushes a hand over a sleek dark feather, admiring the glossy sheen that told him their owner took good care of them. His hands brush over the plaque underneath tracing the letters that spelled out his name. he moves on.

He turns to a lectern next, brushing his fingers delicately over a book, it was a copy, as the owner would realise this was missing. He delicately strokes the cover. This one doesn’t need a name; he knows exactly who the books belongs to.

He moves on again, past the flag that hangs from where it is pinned, the edges are torn and burnt, the flag in a sorry state. He still knows where the flag is from, the place burned into his memory, filled with hate over its creation.

He comes to the last one he was looking for. He stares at the disks hung on the wall, their black reflective surface displaying his mask, grinning back at his through the engraved plastic. Hung above their owners most prized possession are two feathers, one black and one white. They cross over each other, creating the contrast he had wanted when he created these displays.

They were works of art.

He grabs the feathers off the wall, clenching them in his fist, causing the shafts to bend. He stares down at the feathers, mask concealing his emotions as he watches the feathers twist and bend, warping from their original shape.

He drops them to the floor, watching as the feathers lay there, bent out of their shape, unusable from the moment they were ripped from their place of origin.

“I know where you’re hiding Tommy.” He spits the name, down at the feathers as if it were a curse. “Your new friends won’t be safe for much longer. Spend your time wisely. It’s running out.”

He steps down on the feathers, grinding them underneath his heel. He moves away, towards his desk, where the ink of a letter will have finished drying. Snatching it up he crushes it between his palms, sending it off with ancient magic to its address.

He smiles.

…

Xisuma glances at the letter on his desk, uneasy. No one wrote letters to him, if they wanted to communicate, they would contact him on his comms.

Provided, those would only work on this world, but anyone that might want to contact him had access.

He picks up the letter, eyes skimming over the freshly dried ink. He reaches the bottom and reads the signature, eyes widening as he takes in the small smiley face drawn crudely next to the name.

He drops the letter back down on his desk, but he’s no longer sure whether it can be called that, it is more so a declaration of war, of violence against his lands, if he refused to return someone.

He looks out his window, at the dying sun, as he watches two shapes flit across the sky, they possess more grace than any elytra flier could, which indicates who it is.

Xisuma knows he cannot give into the demands, which means he’ll have to call a meeting.

He turns away from his desk. He’ll do it in the morning, there was no need to worry any of his hermits before he could talk to them about it.

Resolve hardening his mind he settles down for a night of planning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did any of y'all see Ranboo's lore stream last night?
> 
> ...
> 
> Come shout at me on Tumblr, or in the comments below! I wanna know what you think! 
> 
> Tumblr: http://inky-starss.tumblr.com


	8. Chapter 8

Tommy wakes to Grian poking him in the face. He swats the hand away, intending the go back to sleep. What he didn’t expect was for his ass to get hauled out of bed, and for him to land on the floor, face first.

He groans as he stands up, stretching his arms above his head. He turns his head and glares at Grian, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he did so. His feathers ruffle as he glares at Grian for a prolonged period of time.

He hopes that it makes for a menacing figure, but it probably just gives the effect of tired, sleep deprived teenager. He turns around, smoothing and preening his wings as he does so. He was extremely glad for the guidance on how to actually take care of the wings on his back, they had become itchy and uncomfortable to exist with. He was just glad he was able to sort that out now.

He turns back to Grian, “Can I at least get dressed before you drag me wherever we’re going?”

“Yes, but be quick. Its apparently an emergency, no one knows why a meeting has been called.” Grian rushes his words out and Tommy takes a second to process them before he all but shoves Grian out of the room and hurries to get changed.

He pulls on his normal clothes, then considers Wilbur’s old coat. He had cut wing holes in the back of it, so he pulls it on, slipping his wings through the holes and fondly brushing over the ragged edges of it.

Straightening up he hurries from his room, down the stairs and out of the mansion. He had easily memorised the hallways of the place, which allowed him to move around quickly without guidance. He breaks out from the main hallways into the entry hallway where he takes a running leap into the air. He wings make a cracking motion from the sudden movement, releasing the tension he had collected. 

He swoops from the entryway out into the early morning air. Wilbur’s coat billows behind him, creating a small amount of air resistance.

He meets Grian in the air, barely pausing before they move off. They fly, wings straining to boost them through the air as fast as they can, they don’t know how time sensitive this is so they move fast, faster than anyone with elytra and rockets could.

He swoops low over the choppy waves, the deep blue stretching long beneath him. He occasionally gets splashed in the face with a bit of sea foam. Moving up higher to prevent himself from getting soaked with sea spray he creates a ripple on the surface.

They speed over a coral reef, startling all the fish into hiding. They swim among the bright coral, darting away as their shadows pass over them.

The mushroom island is beginning to come into view, the buildings towering above. According to Grian it is the shopping district of the world. Tommy didn’t have a shopping district on the Dream SMP, but he thinks he’ll like it. It seems cool anyway.

They come to the meeting area, landing hurriedly, startling a few people who hadn’t noticed them approaching. Tommy sees the looks people are giving him, wondering who he is. He grimaces at them, daring the people to approach him.

His wings begin to ruffle up, challenging anybody to come near and disturb him. Only one person comes near them, and they don’t really speak to Tommy. Mumbo walks over to talk to Grian, sending Tommy a quick greeting, which Tommy returns gracefully before returning to glaring at the other people there.

Xisuma steps up onto a small podium, helmet firmly on his head. The podium here is barely anything compared to the one that had been in L’Manburg, before it had been blown up of course. The podium reaches a few blocks off the ground, making the admin feel closer to them rather than further away.

He prefers this podium to the other one, it makes him feel less as if he’s about to be exiled again, or something worse. It feels safer in a way, the person on top not as high up above him, and less isolated from those below.

The conversations around him stop, those looking at him look to Xisuma. This allows him to relax, his feathers lowering down slightly. He’ll have to sort those out later. He turns his attention to the admin on the podium.

“Greetings fellow hermits,” he begins, “I wish it were under better circumstances that we were meeting here today.” That causes a few hermits to shift around uneasily, mutterings beginning to pass from person to person.

“I won’t lie to you, I called you all here because of an extremely serious problem that we may be facing. This is not based off of any friendly conflicts or wars that may have arisen between you, this is an outside enemy.”

This causes people to begin to worry, he can sense the rising tensions within the crowd, many shooting their neighbours worried looks.

“Before we discuss serious topics, I would first like to welcome one of our new members, TommyInnit. He’s come from another world, and we don’t actually know how he got here, but he’s a hermit now.”

He freezes slightly, he’s a hermit now? He had never thought it would be that easy to join this server. They seemed like nice people sure, but he had essentially broken into their world, and they accepted him with open arms?

He smiled at the welcomes that he received, glad that others were at least pretending to be happy, though he hoped it was genuine.

“Moving back to our more serious topic. Another world has essentially declared war on us. The word war wasn’t used, but I got the message quite clearly.” This caused everyone to worry, voices talking over one another as Xisuma waited for them all to settle down again. 

“the admin magic used to transport a letter,” he brandishes a piece of paper as he speaks, “is an extremely difficult and archaic type of magic. It is rarely taught, let alone sued anymore as we now have comms. This means we are facing an extremely powerful admin, and most likely, server.”

People shifted around, the mass of players shifting forwards, ready to hear what was going to happen, they just wanted to know what they were up against.

Tommy stood still, watching with a growing dread and an idea of who they’re up against. It doesn’t make him feel good. It causes a small rock to settle in the base of his stomach, cold and weighing him down.

His feathers ruffle up again, this time in fear rather than an act of aggression. He pretends he doesn’t notice the way Grian edges closer to him, Mumbo moving around his back to stand on his other side.

Despite barely knowing the man, he is comforted by him standing and shielding him from the majority of the crowd. He also appreciates Grian on his other side, despite the man not covering the whole of him, the wing around him is comforting. He can almost feel the heat radiating off of him.

The action kind of reminds him of when Phil would shield him from the world. It reminded him of a time when Phil would act like his father rather than a near stranger.

He watches Xisuma as he settles the crowd. He does so efficiently, able to quickly get all of the hermits back on track.

“As I was saying, we are essentially at war. You may be wondering who with and why.” He pauses, sucking in a deep breath and exhaling it in a heavy sigh. 

“Last night I was contacted by Dream, the admin of the Dream SMP. He stated that we had something that belonged to him, something that was meant to be kept on his server. Unless we gave it back he would come to our world, destroy everything and everyone within it, and return with what he had ‘lost’.”

Tommy shudders, a full body shiver running through him as his eyes widen in fear. He didn’t think Xisuma would even consider sending him back to the Dream SMP, he had just declared him a citizen of their world no less than five minutes ago.

“I do not plan to give it back, as what Dream demands isn’t an object or possession, it’s a person.”

People appear to figure out who he was talking about, as they turn to him. He cowers back into the shelter of the two men beside him, wings raising slightly to ward off their gazes. They turn back to Xisuma as he demands their attention again.

“Now, we all know how dangerous the Dream SMP has been made out to be, I don’t know how much of it is truth, be we know for a fact that it has tow of the greatest warriors of our time on there, Dream and Technoblade. After this meeting has concluded I would like to speak to Tommy to determine how dangerous his SMP would be when united. This concludes our meeting, what you need to take away from this is to prepare for actual war, get yourself as much stuff as possible, and spend time enchanting your items as much as you can.”

With that final statement he steps off the podium, the crowd beginning to disperse as he makes his way over to him. Many people begin to fly off with their elytras, firing off rockets, making Tommy wince slightly as they remind him of the festival.

He represses the memories and focuses on the admin in front of him, making sure he stands tall and gives them his respect.

“I feel we should take this some other place; would you like to return to where you are staying currently?”

Tommy nods quickly, already preparing himself to take off, Mumbo steps aside, seemingly intent on following them as he equips his elytra and withdraws his rockets. Xisuma does the same.

Tommy and Grian take off first, the most used to flying. They wait for the other two to gain altitude before shooting off, albeit slower than before. They meander back to Grian’s base, flying slowly to allow the elytra fliers to keep up with them.

Tommy makes his way up to the bird room, landing at the doorway and stepping inside. He goes around, greeting the parrots on the shelves as the others arrive on their own time.

Once Xisuma, the last one to reach them, has arrived, they sit down, in a rough circle on the carpet.

Tommy begins with a question, “What have you heard about the Dream SMP?” He looks around at the others, waiting for them to give him some information.

Grian chimes in first, “That it’s a war-torn world, where there never has been peace and never will be. It sounds so impossible that I don’t believe it’s true.”

Tommy almost laughs at the naivety of the person in front of him, but he doesn’t as they’re having a serious conversation about a place they have never visited.

“Yeah, uh, that’s true.”

He looks down, not wanting to see the concerned looks of the people he’s come to consider his friends.

“Have you ever had to fight in a war then?”

“Yes, I’ve fought in several. The first on I fought in when I was fourteen, me and Wilbur, my older brother, wanted to create our own country, and so we fought for it. We had a whole team of people, there was me, Wilbur, Tubbo, my best friend, Fundy, Eret and Niki. I lost my first life when Eret betrayed us and led Dream and his friends to the Control Room. We agreed to have a shootout using bows, and I volunteered to go against Dream. He shot me, straight through the heart, which was how I lost my second life.”

He pauses for a breath before continuing, “I was able to get our country independence by trading in my discs to Dream. We decided to have an election, and me and Wilbur were running mates. We were so certain that we would win, but we didn’t. Schlatt came into the server on election day and won it, combining his votes with another party. He exiled us that day, me and Wilbur, but he kept Tubbo behind. Wilbur lost his second life that day when he was shot as we were running. I was fifteen at the time.”

He pauses again. “That’s sounds horrible.” Grian sympathetically murmurs.

“I’m not finished yet. We then hid away in two intersecting ravines that we called Pogtopia. Schlatt renamed L’Manburg to Manburg. We asked Techno to come in for assistance, which he did. He’s my other brother.” He clarified.

“We fought in a smaller war, the pet war, where we fought against Sapnap, and Dream took our side. It was a smaller conflict. This was around the time that Wilbur began to lose it. He was intent on blowing up Manburg, and Dream supplied him with several stacks of tnt to do so. He planted it all under L’Manburg and planned to blow it up at the festival Tubbo had told us about. We planned for Tubbo to have a cue.”

“The day of the festival arrived and me and Wilbur snuck into L’Manburg. Techno didn’t have to because he received an invite from Schlatt. The festival begins and they play some games before Schlatt and Tubbo’s speeches.”

“Schlatt carries out his speech, and Tubbo does the same, he gives the cue as planned. That’s when it all began to go wrong. Schlatt set up an execution stand around Tubbo and got Techno to kill him with his rocket launcher. Techno then proceeded to kill all of the audience and Schlatt and Quackity, who were also on the podium. The only person who lost a life that day was Tubbo.”

“After the execution, many people from L’Manburg joined Pogtopia, and we planned to take down Manburg. On the day of our fight, we received news that Dream had joined Schlatt’s side. Techno provided all of our weaponry that day. We never had to fight Schlatt that day. He had a heart attack and died in front of us all. We thought we had won, and so we went around setting up a new L’Manburg. Tubbo was put in as president. Unbeknownst to us, Wilbur had snuck away during Tubbo’s presidential speech, and was in the button room.”

“That was when Phil, our father, joined the world. He tried to stop Wilbur, at least I hope he did. I won’t ever know because after L’Manburg got blown up Wilbur begged Phil to kill him. He did, and I watched from below as he did it. Techno then released two withers onto us all and told me to ‘die like a hero’.” He feigned quotation marks around the last part.

“A few days later I got exiled by Tubbo under Dream’s guidance for setting on fire a house that was repaired in five minutes. Dream forced me to stay in one place, a settlement that I named Logstedshire. He would come by everyday and blow up all the materials I had managed to gather. However, I had been storing items that I had hidden away, and he found them. He blew all of my stuff up and blew Logstedshire up too. I’m sure he would have killed me that day had I not leaped through a portal whilst he was distracted. That’s how I ended up here.”

He looks up, finishing his story. He takes in the pale faces around him, knowing that the story would be shocking to them. He had seen how they lived. There were no conflicts in this land, and any wars were friendly, never with the intent to kill or maim.

“What’s a life?” Xisuma questioned, seeming as if he were reluctant to ask.

“We each had three lives, if the death was meaningful enough, we would lose one. If we lost all three the admin, Dream, would put a block on you respawning. No one actually knows why Schlatt didn’t come back. At most he lost two lives, but he never respawned. My brother lost all three, he came back as a ghost.”

“Oh.” Xisuma seemed to regret asking, “I’ll never do that here Tommy, in Hermitcraft we allow infinite respawns.”

“It seems like most of what we were told was true then.” Mumbo mused, seemingly turning the knowledge he had gained over in his head.

“That means that they will be a formidable enemy. Say, Tommy, would they all follow Dream and do what he says?”

“Yes, without a doubt, everyone is too scared of him. The only person that might be swayed is my brother, Techno. He's never cared much for figures of authority, he’s an anarchist.”

That brings some raised eyebrows.

They continue to discuss the members of Tommy’s old server as they form strategies and plans, ways to fight back against them.

…

In another world, a man in a mask rallies his troops. 

He smiles, the same face stretching grin he wears on his mask.

He directs them forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come shout at me on Tumblr, or in the comments below! I wanna know what you think! 
> 
> Tumblr: http://inky-starss.tumblr.com


	9. Chapter 9

They stand, gathered in front of the portal. It makes the occasional sound, swirling and warping within its frame. Techno isn’t sure what the frame is made of, it certainly isn’t obsidian, but he’s not enough of a builder to know the material.

He glances around at those surrounding him. He has to repress a shudder as he takes in their lime green eyes. The colour seems to reach into his soul, poisoning him from the inside out. He’s surprised that Dream didn’t also use whatever creepy magic he had on the other members of the world.

He straightened his posture, ensuring that Dream wouldn’t see the hesitancy in his gaze, wouldn’t see the reluctance that he holds to go and invade another world. He’s everything for chaos, sure. But this is a massacre, they’re going into a world full of other people, all because Dream is annoyed that someone got out.

He watches, stood at the front of their party as Dream paces around the portal. He’s circles it a few times, though Techno’s not sure why. Suddenly Dream’s head swivels in his direction.

“Techno, come here. I have a task for you.”

He steps forward without complaint, it would be fatal to do so. He’s good at fighting, but not good enough to fight off the army that Dream has amassed. He isn’t sure that he’s even seen some of these people before, which makes him wonder where they’ve come from.

He comes closer to the portal, the cool warmth of its magic washing over him. He doesn’t look into the centre, knowing it will make him sick with the twisting way it moves.

“I want you, to go through here, and scout out the land. Only return once you have found the target and the location of their main base.”

He hates the way that Dream refers to Tommy as ‘the target’. He’s a person, though, looking back at the crowd of people behind him, he supposes Dream doesn’t care much for the humanity of the members of his world.

He’s glad that he at least left Ghostbur out of it, he saw him of no use. Techno would like for it to stay that way; he knows things about Ghostbur that Dream doesn’t. Those things would probably make him of more interest than Tommy.

He nods stiffly, being sure to keep any and all emotion shoved to the side. He is the one that Dream trusts the most, allowing him to wander around a foreign server with no way of monitoring him or keeping him in check.

He stands still as Dream’s hands float in the air around him, precisely and with expertise ease, drawing runes, allowing him to move in their world undetected, meaning his entering the world will be concealed. It will apparently also cover death messages, but Techno doesn’t believe in Dream that much.

He finishes and pats him on the shoulder, signalling he is free to go. He steps into the portal, watching as the smile on Dream’s mask begins to warp, curving wider and wider as he is whisked away.

…

Tommy perks up, feathers ruffling as he watches the green canopy in front of him. He watches as a few of the leaves rustle. It gives him an idea of where they are. Corkscrewing down through the canopy he startles those below him, causing them to fall off of the branch they had slowly been inching their way along.

Tommy freezes, before diving down to catch them, it was only a training exercise after all, they wouldn’t want any casualties before the real enemies actually arrived. That would just be embarrassing. 

“Sorry about that.” He apologises, lowering them both to the jungle floor. Mumbo just shakes his head and laughs.

“It’s my own fault for not being aware enough of what was going on around me.” And Tommy cannot argue with that, that’s the whole reason they’re even doing this, to evaluate and refine their skills. Though it would appear that most are out of practice due to the relative peace on their server.

Their comms buzzed.

They both froze and looked down, they had agreed not to use their main chat as Xisuma knew of an ancient magic that allowed people to enter a server undetected. It was around the same age as the letter magic apparently, causing Xisuma to be wary that they could enter the server and none of them would be notified.

He glances down at his comm and the only thing on his screen is the notification of him being added to a chat. Curious, he moves to the chat in question and finds that all the members of the world have been added. It’s essentially just another world chat, but it means that any intruders won’t be able to access it.

He ignores the few ‘hello’s that get put into the chat, watching as other messages are pinged back and forth, between various other members.

He slips it back into the trenchcoat pocket, which he has taken to wearing now. He wants to remind anybody from his old world, his no-longer-a-home world, that there are reasons behind his move. The reason is Dream, and what he did to Tommy’s little family, the one he had found and made himself.

He stretches his wings out, giving no warning before he takes back off into the skies. He ascends higher and higher, higher up than a normal human with a pair of elytra would be able to go. Grian says its something like evolved lungs and differences within that, allowing for them to breathe easily at higher altitudes.

He’s glad of it now, coasting above the clouds, he shivers slightly in the cold. The icy fingers dig into his skin and threaten to tug him back, back to when he had been above the clouds, using Dream’s trident to fly into the air above the clouds. He had felt so free.

He had been so lonely.

He swoops back down, breaking through the clouds and plummeting down, back towards his home. Because that’s what it is, it was his home, with the people he now considered his friends, because they had taken him in. They had never forced him to fight in a war, never forced him out of his home, and never forced him into situations he didn’t want to face.

He landed softly despite the speed at which he had been descending, relieving the speed at the last second with one powerful swipe of his wings. He glances around before taking off again, realising that no one was around.

He flew, rolling onto his back for a second, before he saw the position of the sun in the sky. He shudders to a stop, banking in the opposite direction he was going. He was meant to be at the spawn point of the world, flying high above and ensuring no one enters, and if they do, to alert the other members of the server.

He flies low. Almost in the sea with the level he’s at. He stills his wings, allowing only for small flaps to occasionally boost him along. He doesn’t want to alert anyone that might be there of his presence. 

He’s several minutes late arriving at his destination, the other sentry long gone once he arrives. He swoops down low, not daring to land on the sand, they had smoothed the san over, with strict instructions for no one to step foot on it. This way they would know if anyone without that information had stepped on the island.

He feels the blood drain from his face as he moves closer. He can see boot prints in the sand. Deep heavy-set prints leading towards the ocean. When he follows them, he can see scuff marks of something being dragged, most likely a boat to cross the oceans with.

He wonders if he had passed by the person in the boat as he flew, because it was only one person, the prints told him that much. But he could have flown straight past, away from his vantage point of high in the sky.

He mentally curses himself, pulling out his comms as he hovers, slightly above the sand of the beach. He sends a hurried message to their group chat before shoving it back in his pocket and taking off into the sky.

He could tell from the direction of the boot prints that the person had at least been heading in the direction of the jungle. He hurries back that way, wings beating the air around him, sending him shooting forward with each flap of his wings.

He sees a boat in the distance, moving relatively fast, as if the passenger is reluctant to be seen. Tommy knows it’s none of the hermits, as they all have either wings or elytras to use, none of them bother with boats.

He shifts mid-air, tumbling slightly as the winds tug at his wings. He rights himself quickly, urgency causing adrenaline to thrum through his veins.

He hovers over the boat, several feet up in the air, for a split second before he plummets downwards. He lands with a squawk, causing the passenger to jump.

They turn to face him, but Tommy would have recognised the man anywhere. It’s Technoblade, it’s his brother, Techno. And he’s sat in a boat, in Tommy’s new world, staring at a random magpie that had chosen to divebomb him. Tommy could almost laugh at the absurdity of it all. 

But he didn’t. Instead, he shifted back, flaring his wings and puffing up his feathers, trying to make himself look bigger. He draws himself to his full height, straightening his posture and trying to look threatening.

He begins fumbling to pull out his heavily enchanted sword, and grabs it, pointing it at Techno, poised under the man’s chin. They come to a standstill, both knowing what happens if the other moves.

“Why are you here.” His voice comes out cold, his words demanding an answer. Techno just stares impassively into his eyes, unblinking and unyielding.

“The wings are new.” He monotones, seemingly not caring about the blade stuck under his chin poised to slice. Tommy’s eyes narrow, he opens his mouth to retort, but before he can two more people land on the boat, one slightly unbalanced from the long glide with their elytra.

“Put the sword down Tommy, we’ve got him from here.” Tommy lowers his sword at Mumbo’s command, still holding it ready at his side, just in case. 

“We will be taking you back to be held, you will give us information, or you will stay trapped.” He fits a cuff of some kind around Techno’s wrist, swiftly letting go and repeating the action with the other. He hoists him up underneath his armpits, like some sort of cat. Techno just lets it happen, dragging his feet across the base of the boat as he is dragged. 

Mumbo moves to where Grian is stood, and they quickly share his weight before taking off. The rockets echo loud in Tommy’s ears as he shoots up from the boat, flying just behind them as they make their way back to where they had come from.

They were travelling in the direction of the Shopping District, he assumes they must have some kind of holding cell set up there. Flying underneath Techno, Tommy flips onto his back to stare into the empty face of his brother. He honestly doesn’t know how to feel about seeing him again. He hadn’t seen him in a long time, even before being exiled from L’Manburg.

Techno just blinks at him, eyes skimming over his wings, seemingly taking in the markings and patterns spread across the feathers.

“You’re a magpie then. I can’t say I didn’t expect this, though I did expect them to raven’s wings, like Phil’s were.”

Tommy balks slightly at that but keeps up an impassive face to match Techno’s.

“Oh yeah? Why was that huh?”

“Phil’s son and all. I expected you to be a raven like him.”

“Phil isn’t an Avian, and he barely counts as my father anyway.”

“Phil was an Avian, he’s not anymore, someone sliced his wings clean off. They were real proud of themselves, not that they got to relish in it for too long.”

Tommy has known Techno long enough to know what that means. He doesn’t question it. He instead flips himself back over and dives down towards the Shopping District. He heads for where he can see a crowd gathered. They stand in front of a relatively new-looking building.

He lands in front of Xisuma, and Grian and Mumbo follow not long after, carrying Techno with them. A few hermits take a step back as they see who it is, no doubt wary of the stories they had heard of ‘The Blade’. Tommy wasn’t so naïve, this wasn’t the Blade, it was just plain old Techno, he would never have given up like that unless he didn’t care, meaning he was supressing those who screamed for blood currently. Either that or he was doing a very good job of hiding it.

They half-dragged him in through the door, Tommy following closely behind and watching as they set him down in a room and locked the door. The room was fairly nice, with a bed in the corner and a small room off to the side. He assumed it was the bathroom, seeing as it was more private. 

He watches Techno through the bars as the man explores the room.

…

Dream frowns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come shout at me on Tumblr, or in the comments below! I wanna know what you think! 
> 
> Tumblr: http://inky-starss.tumblr.com


	10. Chapter 10

He surveys the crowd, his mask reflecting the light from the sun. It is midday. Dream frowns. Techno should be back by now, he’s an efficient person, and an even more efficient fighter. He should be back by now and Dream is regretting not putting the hive mind rune on him before he departed.

He taps his foot impatiently, surveying the green eyes of the crowd in an attempt to relieve some of his frustration. Their eyes shine brightly with his enchantment. He does wish it didn’t have to be forced upon all of them, but he knew that they wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation of joining their old friend.

It was something Dream couldn’t afford.

He was able to wait though. He had eternity to do it with.

He stood in front of the opal frame and waited. He had the time.

…

Techno stared at the floor beneath his feet. He had reset his spawn point on the bed. He didn’t particularly want to wake up back in the Dream SMP if things here took a turn south. He doubted that would happen, they seemed nice, they had put him in an extremely fancy cell. It’s more of a room with an outside lock on it than a cell if he’s being honest.

He glances up and finds Tommy, still stood outside his ‘window’ looking in, staring at him with narrowed eyes. His wings were all puffed up behind him, which amused Techno, reminding him of an angry cat. They were angry sure, but relatively harmless to him, not that he would ever tell Tommy that he thought that.

The wings were more of a surprise than he’d be willing to admit. He had just assumed that Tommy hadn’t inherited the Avian gene, whilst it was not common it was not unheard of. But here he stood, magpie wings in their full glory, as Tommy stood outside and stared in at him. The magpie bit was a surprise, he had expected his wings to be a near carbon copy of Phil’s.

He was still angry about what had happened to Phil’s wings, and he didn’t know what had happened to Tommy’s wings, but he knew for a fact that those were not new-grown wings. Avians grew their wings around the age of twelve. He can’t remember whether Tommy did or not, which led him to believe that some tampering had been done. He assumed the same for Tommy.

He knew that Dream was old, older than most of the currently running servers. That made him uneasy, it meant that Dream knew ancient magic. Techno knew what happened if you messed around with ancient magic, the voices in his head were evidence enough of that.

He looked up sharply at the sound of his door opening, but made no attempt to move or escape. He watches as Tommy and two other people, the ones that carried him here it seemed, walked into the room. Another stood outside with a helmet on their head.

“Techno.” Tommy was the first to speak.

“Tommy.” He greeted, he wasn’t here to fight so he tried to make himself appear calmer than he was. The two men with Tommy seemed to be confused, glancing between the two of them after their short exchange.

“I’m gonna cut to the chase,” he begins, “I know why you have me locked in here, and so do you. Dream sent what was essentially a declaration of war to your admin, who I’m assuming is that lovely masked fellow outside of the door.”

The man gave a small wave, awkwardness obvious in every action of his movements, Techno smiled and waved back, hoping to put the person at ease. He didn’t receive a name but he also didn’t expect to.

“Techno,” Tommy pulled his attention away from where he was looking, “what are Dream’s plans.”

“Well, he plans to invade the server, but you already know that. He’s basically mind-controlled the whole of the server, apart from me, because I’m apparently ever-so loyal to him. It’s honestly utter bullshit. But yeah, he cast some kind of ancient magic on everyone using some runes that linked his mind to theirs. I can probably draw the runes out if your admin buddy wants to know the specifics.”

At his words the man outside walks off, most likely to retrieve a quill and paper. He turns back to the three in front of him.

“New wings Tommy? Can’t say them look new grown, did Dream tamper with them or something. There’s a few gaps in my memory around the time they should have been growing in so I’m assuming it’s an admins work and not just me getting old.”

He said the last line in an attempt to get a laugh out of Tommy but is faced with stony silence. 

“Okay. That did not land the way I expected it to. Long story short, Dream wants to kill this whole server and take Tommy back. He plans to put Tommy into this prison he calls Pandora’s Vault, and keep him there. I don’t agree with this, because Tommy’s my brother, so I’m not going to fight you. There, simple.”

He did laugh at the slightly shocked faces of his captors, though he didn’t really think he could call them that, he was the one that invaded after all. He watched as they moved outside, the masked man coming back and entering the room. He sits down next to him on the bed and hands him a piece of paper and a quill. Techno focuses, concentrating on the rune he had seen momentarily flash in the air as Dream put his friends under his own control.

He drew the curving lines and dotted a few symbols around the main shape, making sure to get it as accurate as he could. He stabbed the quill down with a certain finality as he finished the last symbol, placing the quill down he looked up to the admin in question. Wondering what he would do with it.

The admin picks up the paper slowly, as if it would bite him, before dropping the paper suddenly and turning back to Techno.

“How many people did you say he cast this on?”

“Eh, probably around about thirty or so people, the whole server apart from me, him and Tommy, who’s here.”

He couldn’t see the admin’s face, but he had a feeling what he had just told him was bad news. His suspicions were confirmed when he called the trio back into the room.

“So, we might have a bigger problem than I previously thought. The type of hive mind Dream cast on his world, because there are different types, is one that I haven’t seen used in hundreds of years. It makes it so that the vessel, the person he’s controlling, is able to see everything they do, but are unable to stop themselves. However, it puts a large drain on the user, as they share their skills out among those controlled, allowing them to be more powerful, but leaving the admin pretty much defenceless.”

“But, that’s good right?”

“if we want to get to Dream, yes, but we would have to go through several of your friends and possible family members to get to him first because I doubt he will leave himself unprotected.”

“I can still go though, Dream probably doesn’t even know about the shifting part, so I can just shift, get past everyone and get to him, easy as.”

The admin hesitated, and Techno could see where it originated from, they would be potentially sending Tommy to his death. He was rathe reluctant to let him do that himself.

“Only if you take someone else with you, and seeing as you plan on shifting there is only one person who can go with you easily.”

Techno turned his gaze to the man with parrot wings, they were extremely bright and hard to miss, meaning the others in the room had already realised where the admin was going with his train of thought before he even finished.

The man looks around before straightening up, “Course I’ll go with Tommy, who better to send than me? I’m probably better at infiltration as a bird, it wouldn’t be my first time after all.” He finished with a confident laugh, that slowly trailed off. His uneasiness radiated off in waves, though it would seem no one else noticed it.

Techno assumed it was just general uneasiness about going to see one of their generation’s best fighters. Granted, they had one in a cell, but the only reason he was here was because of Tommy. He didn’t think he’d be able to bring himself to hurt him.

Deciding to break the tension in the room that had formed since the man had stopped laughing he spoke up, “So, anyone interested in giving me a pair of elytra? It is the literal only tactical advantage we would have over Dream.”

Tension broken, they stand up, seemingly already trusting Techno to just wander around their world. That’s fine with him though as he isn’t planning on going far, he truly wants to receive and leant how to use an elytra.

…

Tubbo sits in the dark, unable to see beyond the swirling black that has surrounded him. He can’t remember why he’s here, he can’t remember much of anything anymore. So, he waits, coated in the darkness that swirls around him, gripping his feet like claws that sink in and poison him from the inside out.

The whispers of mist that brush past his ear tells him all of his thoughts, he can hear every single hateful and self-deprecating thought that he’s ever had, they swirl past his ears, making them twitch. He only hears the beginning, but that is enough to make him want to cower away in fear. The mist brushes soft hands over his horns, seemingly admiring the crown that has laid heavy on his head, it is one that he never asked for and one that digs in deeper every time he sees someone cower away in fear, images of Schlatt flashing in their glassy eyes

But he is unable to move, and is unable to remember why.

…

Fundy thinks, long and hard, as the darkness moves around him. He watches it closely, his mind wanting him to reach out and touch it, bring some of it closer for examination, but his body refuses to cooperate, he’s been there for what feels like centuries.

Truly he does not know how long he has been here, the strings over his body holding him in place, semi-collapsed on the floor, like a discarded puppet, ready to be retrieved.

…

Niki grinds her teeth together, mentally thrashing at the bonds put over her, she isn’t stupid, she knows exactly what Dream did to her, exactly what the rune he drew on her face was before he ahd even finished it. She recognised it, of course she did, she’s travelled around a lot, and she has met all kinds of people, the admins of old who see themselves as gods, she has come across only one who sees his world members as equals.

She wishes she had chosen that place to settle down. They seemed nice, not discriminating against any hybrids, despite how bad other worlds have become.

She sags, strings holding her up as she goes limp, unable to move.

…

Phil stands still, knowing that no matter what he does, he will not be able to get free. He knows, that if he waits long enough and behaves, that Dream will set him free.

They can never be bothered to hold on for long, he knows that for a fact.

…

Wilbur moves through the abandoned L’Manburg, he saw what was happening, and he knew nothing could be done for them as they slowly went limp, standing aimlessly until Dream gave an instruction.

They had all vanished then, presumably to someplace else in the world.

He remembers the worry in Techno’s eyes, the emotion buried so deeply that most wouldn’t recognise it for the fear it was. He felt sorry for him, surrounded by the hollowed-out shells that used to be his friends.

But he kept his distance, knowing nothing could be done.

He drops the façade with a sigh, knowing that he had kept up the appearance of Ghostbur too long, but it did the trick. He had been discounted by Dream, and that was his first intention.

He closes his eyes and reaches towards the portal that every ghost had access to. He knew they weren’t meant to do until they were ready to, meaning that this world had done something.

He touches the portal, and disappears from L’Manburg, leaving only a small bit of blue on the ground.

He steps into the new world, clenching his now corporeal hand into a fist. He feels cold without his coat, but knows that it has come here too.

He opens his eyes and looks across the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come shout at me on Tumblr, or in the comments below! I wanna know what you think! 
> 
> Tumblr: http://inky-starss.tumblr.com


	11. Chapter 11

Wilbur stood at the edge of the ocean, he gazed across the choppy waves dyed gold by the sun setting, knowing someone would be here sooner or later. There would have been a notification on every comms in the world. And if it was the one he thought it was, then they would be on high alert, prepared for Dream to enter.

He crouched down, sand shifting under his feet as he trailed a hand through the water. He admired the way it trickled between his fingers, thankful that he was able to touch water again. He had missed the way it washed over him, the salty smell of the ocean reminding him of Sally. 

He smiled, reminiscing of the times he had spent with the shifter. Her hair had been a brilliant salmon pink. He doesn’t know what happened to her. She had left him with Fundy for a few minutes and never returned. He isn’t sure whether it was him or if it was something else.

He told everyone that Fundy’s mother was a salmon, because she technically was despite how little she actually shifted. He thought it would be easier to cope if they were always making jokes about his ‘fish wife’.

Hearing the firing of rockets overhead, he turns his gaze upwards and looks up to the sky. The approaching person is occasionally illuminated by the rockets they were using to move along. The small flashes allow him to track the person in the rapidly growing dark. They land quickly and Wilbur soon realises they aren’t alone.

The two people look to him, one infinitely more familiar than the other.

“Techno? When did you get here?” He surveys his brother, “When did you get an elytra?”

“I think I should be asking how you’re alive, that seems more important now.” Despite his monotonous voice Wilbur can still see the shock in his eyes, he’s the only person who can read Techno like that whilst Wilbur wears his heart on his sleeve, easily broken whilst the other hides his away, buries it so deep within himself in an attempt to prevent himself from being hurt.

Wilbur isn’t fooled, he saw him cry at his funeral, and then he saw him cry at Tommy’s. He knows that his brother pretends he is further away from his emotions than he actually is.

“I left the server, simple as, Dream holds no power here so neither do his blocks on respawning. I knew the whole time, I just couldn’t bear to leave you behind, knowing you were unable to follow, then Tommy left and Dream soured. I gave up then.”

“You remembered? The whole time, and you said nothing?” Techno’s voice is quiet, the hurt apparent in his tone. Wilbur winces at that, he had hoped to reveal that in a softer way. He shuffles his feet, unsure on how to proceed.

“Yes..?”

“Of course you did, I don’t think I could have beared it if you were truly that clueless, slightly hurt you didn’t tell me sooner though.” He can hear the joking tone in his voice and sighs in relief. He looks over Techno, taking in how his piglin features are more prominent. He realises something with a start, and reaches out his hand.

“Just had a thought, give me a second.” He presses his palm to the exposed skin on Techno’s wrist, feeling the small electrical shock that he had expected he pulled back, satisfied. 

“What was that.” Wilbur laughed at his own brother’s cluelessness.

“That, brother dearest,” he mocked, “was me undoing the lovely work of Dream, he wouldn’t have been able to wipe the memories of every one of your fans, but he could easily hide any hybrid features within me.”

Techno stands there, processing his words, shrugs and turns. He chucks a pair of elytra over his shoulder. “Catch.”

Wilbur fumbles to do so, reluctant to allow such a precious object to be filthied by the sand they stood on.

“Did you have to do that.” The other person sighs. He glances over, taking in the parrot wings and red jumper, before recognising them.

He sticks his hand out, “Nice to meet you Grian. I’m Wilbur, Wilbur Soot, previously deceased, ex-member of the Dream SMP. I’ve admired your skills within building for several years.” He smiles, realising just how formal that introduction was.

The man seems a bit taken aback, but he hesitantly clasps Wilbur’s hand and shakes it. “Nice to meet you too, glad you could see something within my builds.”

“Come on.” Techno draws out his vowels, much like an impatient child would do. Techno leaps up, slightly awkward, fumbling with a rocket before lighting its fuse and shooting off. Grian chucks him a stack of rockets and takes off, no assistance necessary.

Wilbur hurries to place the elytra of his back, securing them in place. He takes a running leap and jumps into the air, firing off a rocket as he does so. He shoots above the waves before setting off another, rising higher into the sky. He enjoys the feeling off air rushing through his hair and the exhilaration that courses through his veins.

He catches up with the other two quickly, soaring over the ocean as they make their way through the sky. They shoot over several islands with structures on them. Wilbur takes in the builds, admiring them as much as he can from a quick glance at them. They appear to be heading towards a jungle biome, heading towards a large house with high speeds. 

Grian suddenly tucks himself into a dive, wings tucking in behind him as he plummets into a dive. It startles Wilbur when he sees him suddenly fall away from the group. Techno soon follows suit and Wilbur has no other choice than to follow behind Techno. He pulls up at the entrance to what seems to be a small glass room, near to the top of the structure.

He watches as Techno glides in through the door, landing with a practiced ease that Wilbur knows was not there before the SMP. He follows, albeit more clumsily than the two before him. He stumbles and falls flat on his face. His elytra falls over his face, adding insult to injury. He hears a loud laugh in front of him that could only belong to one person.

He shoots up, elytra slipping off of his head quickly as he takes in Tommy in front of him. The teen is laughing, and he’s wearing his old coat. He’s wearing the coat that Wilbur died in, looking like it hasn’t seen a wash in the months since then. He can see the bloodstains on the front, a brutal reminder of his own death. And Tommy had chosen to wear it despite that.

He draws in a sharp breath before hugging Tommy closely, bringing him close to his chest and smothering the teen’s face in his shirt. He feels bad for leaving him behind, but the mist in front of his eyes had clouded the way, tricking him into thinking that there was no way to clear it except destroying everything. When the ash and smoke raining down from the explosions hadn’t wiped it clean he had turned to their father and begged him to kill him.

That hadn’t wiped the mist from his mind either, so he had sat down, and he had thought. He had created a persona, despite seeing the way his amnesia hurt his family. He had sat back, pretending in blissful ignorance for what he had done as he healed.

The mist was gone now, allowing him to see the brother he had abandoned, the brother that had watched an estranged father kill his closest family member. He hugged the teen close, feeling him slowly relax in his arms as he buried his face further into Wilbur’s yellow jumper.

He hadn’t been able to give Tommy a hug as a ghost, despite how much he wished to hold him close during the boy’s exile, he was unable to interact with any person. He had been excited to deliver his invitations, wanting to bring Tommy’s friends to him, as he couldn’t go to them. He should’ve checked his surroundings more carefully, should’ve prevented Dream from drawing the shadow rune on his shoulder. 

He remembers the white mask smiling at him as he was sucked away, trapped in the shadows for days on end. He doesn’t know when Dream let him, but he does know that Tommy’s party was long past. He had returned to a shell of the teen he once knew, the boy quiet and submissive, nothing compared to the boisterous and obnoxious teen he had known.

He looked up, ignoring the wet patch that was steadily forming on his shirt. What drew his attention currently was the black and white wings that were partially enveloping him. He almost laughed at how obvious Tommy being an Avian was, he longed for the sky, for the open air and freedom. He should’ve realised sooner, but he supposes that wiped memories do that to you.

They sit in the now empty room, holding onto the anchors that had been in their lives since they were young. He held onto Tommy as the boy released all of his emotions, letting go of all the guilt and sadness that had built up over his exile.

He doesn’t know how long he sat there, holding his brother before he pulled away. The teen ducked his head, wiping at his eyes and not meeting Wilbur’s gaze.

“Sorry.” He mumbles, and the broken tone of his voice is too much for Wilbur to handle. He catches his wrist as it goes to wipe away the tears escaping from his eyes. The sudden movement and bold action makes Tommy look up.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, you are a child, a child,” his voice breaks as he realises how young he truly is, “you are a child, and you are still learning, whoever made you think you need to apologise for showing your emotions can go shove their opinions up their own arse.”

This startles a laugh out of Tommy. Wilbur stands up, grasping Tommy and pulling him up to, Tommy tucks his wings behind his back, shifting them until they’re comfortable. 

“Should we go find your friends?”

“Yeah, they’ve probably moved to the kitchen.”

Tommy leads the way out of the room, Wilbur following slightly behind him. He thinks sadly of all the people that will be entering the world within the next twelve hours, the ones pulled here unwillingly. He can’t forget the way Tubbo’s eyes glowed green, he hopes that Tommy will never have reason to remember them.

He enters a well-decorated kitchen, watching as Tommy throws himself into a chair between Techno and Grian. Another man is sat at the table, on Grian’s other side, he recognises the man as Mumbo, one of Grian’s long standing friends.

He moves to the table, sitting on the other side of Techno, who quickly glances at him and sends him a smile before looking back to the food in front of him. Wilbur then takes notice of the food in the centre of the table that Tommy is helping himself to. He tentatively reaches a hand out before receiving a nod from Grian and pulling a small portion of food towards himself.

Weird, this would be the first food he’s eaten since he died.

…

Dream stands in front of the portal, the sun setting behind him and casting a long shadow over the ground.

He watches the portal, the magic contained within its frame twisting violently, almost like a writhing snake.

Techno hasn’t returned. He frowns.

He glances back at the army behind him, the glowing of their netherite illuminating the night. The heavy magic over the area has warded off any stray mobs that may have appeared in the early dusk dim.

He walks over to the front of the podium, overlooking the crowd.

“It would appear,” he drawls, “that Techno has not returned. He most likely has gone to his brother, the way I planned.”

He smiles, grin stretching under his mask as the gloom creeps closer.

“We depart tonight. They won’t know what hit them.”

He turns, netherite axe flashing as it is swung from his shoulders. He holds it by his heel, looking back over his shoulder.

“March.” He commands.

And they do.

The magic crackles through the air.

Dream’s grin widens.


	12. Chapter 12

Dream did not bother to cast the runes he had originally planned on using. There was no point in disguising their arrival, it would only delay the inevitable. He didn’t want to give those they opposed a sense of hope. There would be nowhere for them to run.

He stepped through last, following on the heels of the so-called president of a crater. He enjoyed that name, it encapsulated the general emptiness and hopelessness of the place. You could fill a crater in, but it would never be the same, you would notice where the earth had been turned over and replaced. It made him smile, some wounds could never be removed forever blemishing the place they reside.

It’s a warning, a reminder, of all the country aspired and failed to be.

He stepped through the portal, relishing in the warping feeling they portal inflicting, stepping out confidently and letting the salty wind blast across his face.

His troops were already setting out, united in the direction of a certain jungle biome. They were armed with weaponry and building supplies, ready to set up a base of operations.

He smiled.

Dream liked where things were going.

…

Tommy stood, high up, resting near one of the spires of the mansion, he sat, leaned up against the dark prismarine, soaking up the cool left from the night as the sun hung low in the sky, barely risen. He scrolled through his comm, reading the arrival of the whole of the SMP. There were people here that he hadn’t heard from in months.

He scrolled back, looking for a certain name, he didn’t want to admit that he missed Tubbo, but he knew the truth and so did everyone else that he interacted with. He had come up here to get away from the sympathetic looks everyone was giving him.

He felt guilty, he was the reason their server was being invaded. Most of the players of the world were gathered downstairs, Techno and Xisuma leading the planning. Tommy didn’t need to attend, he already knew what he would be doing, and so did Grian but he remained downstairs to make sure no one damaged his property.

He stretched out his wings, preening them into perfect position as the sun rose higher and higher into the sky. He could hear people moving around in the bird room, presumably looking for him. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw Grian fly up to the roof, glancing around before his eyes landed on him. He walked over, wings out slightly in case he fell, but based on his nimble movements Tommy doubted that was going to happen. He reached him and sat down next to him, leaning back against the spire as well. 

“It’s a lovely morning isn’t it?” Grian started, tommy knew the man hated small talk, so he didn’t understand why he was doing it currently, he preferred to just get straight into the important part of the conversation. Tommy couldn’t agree with him more, which is why it confused and slightly annoyed him.

“I know for a fact that you hate small talk, so just get straight to it.” He watched as Grian stiffened slightly, before relaxing and shaking his head, a silent laugh leaving his mouth.

“Yeah, I do, I thought I would dilly dally a bit before getting to the serious stuff. If I’m being honest, I’m slightly reluctant to talk about it myself.” Grain began to ramble so Tommy cut him off before he could get fully into it.

“Okay, what was it that you wanted to talk about?”

“Oh, yes, that. Well, I wanted to talk about the possibility that Dream will try and put some runes on you?” he sounded unsure of his own words, “He won’t be able to do it easily, but well, I’ve heard from Wilbur what he did whilst you were in exile.”

Tommy grimaced, he had hoped that no one would find out about that, he was embarrassed at how easy it had been to break him. He was there for barely a week before he was contemplating jumping into the lava, the only thing that prevented him was Dream, which angered Tommy more. He had reached a low, obeying Dream’s every command, throwing his items in the pit.

He was slightly worried he would feel obliged to do that again, and he would feel bad if he threw the extremely enchanted netherite armour into a pit. False had made it for him apparently, gaps for his wings and all. Apparently, she had made everyone’s armour, which heightened his respect in her even more. You had to be extremely dedicated to hammer that number of enchantments into pieces of armour, and doing it for everyone, she was high up on his favourites list currently.

“Ah,” his voice cracked, making Tommy wince again, “that.”

“Yeah, that. I just wanted you to know that I’ll be with you the whole way through, and if you need to back out that I can cover you.” Genuine gratitude for the man welled up in Tommy, he was glad for the friendship the man had shown him, since the first day he had found him sleeping in his old house. Things could have gone so wrong from there, but it didn’t, instead Grian had helped him.

He was thankful for that, he didn’t know where he would be right now if he hadn’t, probably face down in a ditch somewhere.

“Thank you.” He hoped the gratitude he felt for the man showed in his voice. From Grian’s smile, he assumed it did. He watched as Grian stood up, then allowed himself to be pulled up too. They walked along the narrow rooftop, Tommy jumped off the top, gliding to where he saw everyone stood. He saw Wilbur and Techno stood near to each other, obviously discussing something. 

He tucked his wings in closer, causing him to plummet down, the wind whistled through his ears, a warning of the rapidly approaching ground. At the last second he pulled up, wings opening with an audible crack, causing those in his vicinity to flinch, a few turned towards him, but others who had already seen him do that continued their conversations, ignoring him.

Looking around those gathered, he saw Xisuma talking to Mumbo. Zedaph, Tango and Iskall stood off to one side, heads close to each other, glancing around occasionally. He guessed they were planning something, and from the occasional laughs, he decided he didn’t want to know.

He watched as Grian did a similar thing he did to Xisuma and Mumbo, however, those two didn’t even pause their conversation, whilst others around, such as Joe and Cleo, looked at the man with surprise, before realising who it was and turning away.

Grian seemed slightly annoyed by the lack of attention but quickly joined in the conversation the two were having.

“Annoying child.” He turned to Techno and Wilbur, who had seemingly transformed into a piglin overnight.

“Eat a bit too much pork last night Wil?”

“Ha ha, very funny child, you eat a few magpies on your way over?”

Okay, Tommy could see the humour in that, but he ignored the quip, ploughing into the conversation.

“As soon as we locate where Dream has set up you lot are drawing all the fighters out right?” At Techno’s nod he continues, “Guess what I’ll be doing?” he didn’t wait for a response.

“I’ll be getting in there and capturing him, me and Grian are infiltrating bird style.”

“We know Tommy, we sat in on the briefing and planning meeting, unlike some people.” He didn’t even care that the last part was aimed at him, excited over the prospect of being bale to take down Dream.

He startles as a hand claps onto his shoulder, whipping around to face the offender, only to find Mumbo, stood with his hands raised as the others watched from behind him, gathered and obviously ready to go.

“Sorry, you ready to go? Grian’s waiting over there for you.” He jerks a thumb in the direction Grian is. He’s stood by the treeline, still talking to Xisuma. Tommy nods his thanks and hurries over to Grian.

He reaches them as they finish their conversation, parting ways as Xisuma hurries back to the main group.

“Ready big G?”

Grian laughs and nods, taking to the skies, waiting for Tommy to join him. He leaps up into the air, relishing in the power in his wings. The make their way to the canopy before shifting. They barely disturb the leaves as the fly across them, the deep green just slightly rustling. He can hear the distraction team below him, he assumes that the far-off explosions are the Boomers. He still finds the name hilarious, seeing it more as an insult than a team name, but he is grateful for their loud distractions.

He follows as Grian banks right, sharply twisting as he follows the path Xisuma must have given him. The move around a tree that sticks up from the canopy, disturbing a few parrots as they fly by at high speed. Tommy’s just glad they didn’t all take off, he would have probably lost Grian in the middle of it.

He watches as Grian dives down, through a small gap in the canopy, he tucks his wings closely, not wanting to disturb the leaves and potentially alerting those in the area of their arrival. They would probably understand a parrot, they are in the jungle after all, but a magpie. He’s thousands of miles away from where he should be, and Dream knows what kind of Avian he is.

He bursts out of the covering of leaves, and halts. They had only arrived last night, and yet they had a completely built base, he marvelled at the designs of it, before diving after Grian, who had settled on the floor, hidden slightly behind a jungle tree.

Landing beside him, he hopped from one foot to the other, before pointing a wing towards what he though to be the entrance.

He hoped Grian got the message as he took off. It seemed he did as he followed soon after, they flew low, not wanting to be spotted. Tommy blended in better with the shadows dappled across the floor, but Grian blended in better with the local wildlife.

They reached the stone entrance and flew in, it seemed abandoned, no one moving through the halls, but the lanterns were lit, meaning that there was someone here. He heard a few quite explosions in the distance, indicating they were still occupied by something else.

Tommy took the lead, sticking to the shadows of the corners and hoping his dark plumage would allow him some camouflage. He paced from corner to corner, only one trail of lanterns seemed to be lit, so that was the path that they followed, moving around each corner with caution.

They came upon a large room, with pillars surrounding the central open space, Tommy quickly skittered behind one of the pillars, looking to the centre of the room. He saw Dream, the man was just sat there, head resting on his palm as he looked out through the open ceiling.

The sunlight reflected off of his mask, causing it to shine a bright white, it almost made Tommy want to go steal it, but he knew he couldn’t and most of all shouldn’t, they were here on an infiltration mission. He looked over to Grian, who was slowly making his way around the room, moving from pillar to pillar. Tommy stayed put, watching Dream, the man wasn’t moving, he just sat on the crude recreation of a throne, it was roughly hewn together with a type of stone Tommy didn’t recognise.

Trust Dream to put himself above everyone, and create a throne, he was always arrogant and self-centred, focusing solely on himself rather than anything else around him. Tommy was sure that would be his downfall.

Well, he was, before hands seized him around the wings, wrapping tightly around his middle and successfully trapping his wings. This person knew what they were doing, and it obviously wasn’t Dream. He assumed it was one of Dream’s possessed people. He hung limply from their grasp, before he remembered Grian. 

He looks over to where he saw him last and sees the parrot. He jerks his head up towards the open ceiling, indicating that he should leave while he still can. The parrot hesitates for a second before taking off and bolting out of the ceiling.

Tommy returns his gaze to the floor, not even bothering to try and see his captor, knowing it would only invoke a feeling of betrayal in him if he saw one of his old friends. They approach Dream, who has straightened up on his throne, the limp posture of before being an act. He watched as Dream reached into a bowl beside him, withdrawing two small cuffs. Tommy scoffed, if Dream thought those would fit around his wrists or that he would even get him to shift back in the first place.

As his captor lifted him up to Dream as they knelt, he realised what Dream was going to do, his eyes catching on the ornate cage positioned beside him.

He struggled, trying to flap his wings, but whoever was holding him was strong. The cuffs fit around his feet, dragging them down and making it near impossible to move them. That was the point he numbly realised as he was transferred to Dream’s hands.

“I wouldn’t shift now Tommy, you might break a few bones.” He could hear the satisfaction in the man’s voice as he was placed in a cage. Doing so forced him to face his captor.

His heart sank right through his feet and shattered on the floor as he took in the form of his best friend, horns curling right around his ears, eyes a sickening green. Tommy felt the betrayal strike him in the chest, like Dream’s arrow back when they had been fighting for their freedom.

He felt so alone in the freedom he had won as he sat, in a gilded golden cage.

…

In the swirling dark, a boy hung from the strings of the puppet master.

He tried to scream.

He failed.

He hung limp from his strings, tossed aside.


	13. Chapter 13

Grian dodged around vines as he flew towards the noise, the occasional explosion helped to guide him as he flew. He shifted back as he darted between branches, stumbling slightly in the ir as his body repositioned itself to account for the extra weight.

He began to see flashes of netherite through the thick foliage, he looked around before spotting the two he was looking for, they were fighting against two people, a pink-haired woman and a man with red and blue glasses.

Xisuma and Mumbo were stood back-to-back, slashing at the two surrounding them. Grian landed heavily, stumbling as he righted himself and rushed towards his friends. He strikes the man down watching with little remorse as his form collapses in on itself, presumably respawning elsewhere. The woman backed away fumbling for a few of his items, before turning on her heel and fleeing. Slightly startled his friends turn towards him.

“Grian? You alright there?” He shook his head, hands beginning to shake more as he trembled, his wings shook, desperately trying to fold in on themselves and make him look smaller than he was.

“Th-they, they caught him. I couldn’t do anything but watch, them put him in a bird cage.” He whirled to face Xisuma, “a bird cage!” He wings spread out at his last protest before snapping them shut again, not wanting to draw any attention to himself.

He knew he was hyperventilating at this point, but there was nothing else he could do, he had let his friend get caught, he had promised him he would be there with him the whole way through, and then as soon as he told him to get out, he had abandoned him.

“I left him, as soon as he got caught, he told me to go, and I did.” He trailed off, voice getting quieter the more he spoke, he felt as the tears began to well up in his eyes, he had just wanted to protect the kid, he had wanted him to be able to have fun, like the child he was. Because that was the truth of this already horrible situation, it was because one person was determined to destroy a child’s life.

“he was a child, and he was already so scared of the whole world,” he felt a tear slip down his face, “He was a child and I was the one meant to be protecting him.” He stopped talking, not wanting to go on, knowing it would only make him feel worse.

He felt someone pull him closer, rubbing circles into his back and speaking in a soothing tone, “hey, hey, it’s okay, we can get him back, us three can go in and storm the place and we’ll get him out.” He felt the person, Mumbo, it was Mumbo, pull away slightly, “we won’t leave him there, I promise. Don’t go beating yourself up over it.”

Grian swiped at the few tears that had escaped his eyes, and pulled away from the hug, straightening himself up and hoping he looked more confident than he felt. He withdrew his sword, taking a moment to look over the enchantments it shimmered with, before he let it rest by his side, brushing slightly against the armour he was wearing. 

He was just glad it all shifted with him, he didn’t want to have to pick it all up each time he shifted. He turns as he hears a rustling in the bushes, coming towards them. He dropped into a fighting stance, feet placed apart and evenly distributing his weight.

The person emerged into the small clearing they stood in and Grian relaxed, seeing the two people who stood there.

“So,” Techno drawled, “I heard we’re going on a rescue mission?”

…

Tommy sat, his wings drawn around himself and sheltering him from the looks he knew he was getting. A few of the SMP members had returned, bringing a few unconscious hermits with them, he saw False and Stress among the four hermits, they were all leaned up against each other, shoved into a corner.

Out of sight out of mind he supposes. Dream just sits on his throne, watching as those he was possessed sit on the floor, staring up at him with their eerie green eyes. Tommy has decided he hates that colour of lime green, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget the way that Tubbo’s eyes had glimmered with it, a malicious grin curling his lips unnaturally as he watched Tommy in the cage.

The gold of the bars had lost its appeal, a cage was a cage after all, no matter how ornately decorated it was.

Most of Dream’s followers were gathered on the floor, sat staring up at him, the same smiled that adorned Dream’s mask pulling at their faces, it distorted them almost beyond recognition. He grimaced, jerking his head away from the quickly gathering crowd.

The only person not stood within the crowd was Tubbo, he seemed to have the honour of standing next to Tommy’s cage, in between him and Dream. The child president stood there, still wearing his suit but decked out in netherite armour that Tommy knew he didn’t have the time to work for meaning that Dream had been the one to provide it.

He could almost smell the magic permeating the air, his more animalistic side more in tune with the magic signatures of those around him. Dream’s magic was washing out on the man in waves, gliding over him, but buffeting everyone else under Dream’s control, Tommy assumed it was how the man kept them under his control.

He hoped it wasn’t hurting them, that they wouldn’t have to watch what was happening, it was traumatising enough for him, he doesn’t even want to think what it would be like it they could see everything they were doing. He’s sure that it must be against an admin law somewhere, not that Dream really seemed to care for the law, he invaded a whole world after all.

He let his senses reach out, brushing past the now-familiar feeling of Dream’s magic. The place seemed to be dripping with it, it covered every single wall and leaked out through the ceiling into the jungle around them. It had a sort of green aura, he had quickly learnt that different magic had different colours, or feelings of colours he supposes as he can’t actually see it.

He knew that a respawn was a blinding white, he had watched as Jack Manifold respawned, they seemed to have a bed room where they would all respawn. So far Jack was the only person to have appeared there with that flash of white, he would have been more worried by the lack of respawns from the enemy, but most of them were here, not out fighting, so he didn’t worry too much.

He suddenly felt something else push on his senses, a small tendril of magic, he reached out, searching for it with his mind, there were four different magical signatures, two extremely similar ones, both a brownish pink colour, another soft yellow colour, that one reminded him of the rising sun, it felt soft and warm, the last one was a fiery red, bursting up every few second in overflowing magic.

They were all surrounded by the softer purple tint that indicated heavy enchantments, they were too close together to accurately guess how many of them were there, but he knew that there was at least four, if not more.

He tracked their progress through the maze of paths that he and Grian had followed earlier, Tommy watched the lime green tendrils of Dream’s magic, hoping that it wouldn’t detect the four new signatures, one that most certainly was not his.

Luck did not seem to be on their side as Dream straightened up, the magic signatures were almost at the entrance to the hall. All of the chatter stilled, everyone looking up to Dream, seeming to be waiting for orders. Dream ordered them silently it seemed, as they all slunk off to the pillars in the room, pressing their backs up against the cold stone and essentially disappearing.

Tommy wished he could shout a warning to those approaching, when they entered they looked around and Tommy felt his heart sink. It was Techno, Wilbur, Grian, Xisuma and Mumbo. They were all decked out in netherite and he could see Techno tossing one of his signature turtle master potions around, from hand to hand. 

The viscous liquid swirled around inside, the silver bouncing off the glass walls that contained it, Tommy felt his eyes drawn to him, it was shiny, and he liked it. He flinched back as Tubbo, the only remaining person other than Dream opened the cage door and reached in, yanking him out unceremoniously.

The small group of people looked confident, and Tommy could see where that confidence originated from, it looked like it was five people up against two people, one of which they presumed to be weak from using magic, Tommy hoped that they had been right about that part.

Tubbo held him around the wings, preventing him from taking flight, he didn’t even bother to struggle, knowing that Tubbo would tighten his hands without hesitation, and Tommy did not want a broken wing at the end of this. He hung from Tubbo’s grasp, head hanging towards the floor.

His friends and family were going to die because he hadn’t kept an eye on his surroundings and had gotten caught.

“Dream.” Techno stepped forward, drawing his axe, the blade shimmering with the enchantments that Tommy knew he had spent weeks on crafting perfectly. “You have something that doesn’t belong to you.”

“Whatever could that be?” Dream feigned confusion, looking around the room to add to the act, Tommy saw a few of the hidden people follow his movements, no one else noticed, “Everything in this room seems to belong to me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, people aren’t possessions, and you’ve got a lot more than two under your control right now.”

Dream had the gall to laugh at him. His laughter echoed around the room as the shadows shifted, moving along the walls, Tommy could hear footsteps moving down the hallway behind the group that had come for him.

In the corner of his vision he saw several white flashes, almost blinding him with the quick succession and intensity of the light.

He knew exactly what that meant, several of Dream’s followers had just died, and the footsteps had quickened, meaning the chance of them being Dream’s followers was significantly lower. He was proven right when several hermits burst into the room, their netherite covered in a few spatters of blood, still drying as it made its slow way down the plating. A few had cuts dripping blood on their faces.

Dream stood suddenly, withdrawing Nightmare, the man’s favourite choice of weapon.

“Now, this could have been resolved peacefully, I didn’t have to hurt anyone, you could have all just accepted it. I didn’t want to do this,” his tone sounded mournful, which Tommy knew was fake, “Tubbo.”

Tubbo seemed to know what that command meant, as he began to apply pressure to Tommy’s wings with one hand. The squeezing compressed his lungs, meaning he wasn’t able to make a sound. He just had to hang there, not daring to moving in case it increased the pressure upon his wings. His whole body was protesting against the extra pressure, he felt one bone come close to snapping, his vision becoming dark at the edges, before he felt someone barrel into Tubbo, knocking them all flying. It left Tubbo sprawled out on the floor, his attacker on top of him, weapon raised high.

Tommy watched, helplessly abandoned on the floor, one wing spread out to the side as the other is trapped under his body. He watches as chaos breaks out across the room, the knocked-out hermits seemingly not as knocked out as he thought, springing to life and rushing to join the fray.

Many of Dream’s followers were newly respawned, causing a slight weakness in the ranks as they struggled to use their potions and regain some strength. He watched as Techno distributed several turtle master splash potions, one for a few people and so on.

He felt someone scoop his limp form up, a sharp intake of breath as they took in the cuffs on his legs. He lays in their arms, as he looks up. It’s Wilbur he realises numbly, as his brother’s eyes begin to fill with tears. He watches as Xisuma comes up beside them both, placing a hand on Wilbur’s shoulder and pulling up his glowing yellow panels.

He taps a few things and then they’re gone, warped away. It would appear that Xisuma had done this with several others before he got to them, as the wounded hermits were spread out across what looked to be a med bay, as False rushed around and provided bandages and potions, allowing them to treat themselves.

They brought his limp form over to a bench, and he watched as Xisuma withdrew a pair of what looked to be pliers. He watched with a strange disconnect as the bands were taken off of his feet. He released his form and shifted back, slightly exhausted from holding it for so long.

“Well, that fuckin’ sucked” He slurred. His head hit the table he was lying on as he passed out, tuning out the worried words above him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uh, tales of the smp am i right?


	14. Chapter 14

Grian stood in the corner of the room, watching in silence as first his wounds were tended to, then as the rest of the hermits trickled into the room and had theirs tended too. It seemed that they hadn’t lost the fight at the base, but they hadn’t won it either, most likely just depleting the resources of their opposition.

Grian knew what they would have to do to get the conflict to actually stop, they would need to contain Dream in some way to allow them to take him to the admin council, see if they could get his permissions revoked and a new admin put in his place.

He didn’t know any of the SMP members very well, but he assumed Tommy would be able to pick a good one, one that was not a child and would be able to keep things relatively under control.

He went over the things they knew about the masked man, he obviously had access to ancient scrolls and texts or was just that ancient, meaning he was extremely dangerous, either way. No one knew what his face looked like apparently, so maybe if they could get the mask off of his face, they could beat him, hopefully.

He was shaken out of his thoughts by a small tap on the shoulder, he turned around and was greeted by Xisuma. “I just thought you might want to know that Tommy’s woken up, he’s doing fine, a little shaken up, but I think everyone here is.”

Grian nodded, glad that his friend was okay, he turned to follow Xisuma back to the room they had put Tommy in to sleep away from the general noise of the main med bay area. Upon entering the room he can see Techno and Wilbur, looking almost identical apart from one’s pink hair and the other’s brown hair, he wondered if the hair dye was purposeful.

The two were talking to Tommy, who was sat up in the bed he had been put in, he looks fine, a bit bruised, but nothing serious. He turns to Grian and grins.

“That was one hell of an infiltration mission, ey?”

Grian laughed at the casual way he referred to his own capture, glad the boy could joke about it. He hoped that meant Tommy didn’t hold him bolting against him.

Almost as if he could read his thoughts, “Thanks for getting help, I wasn’t sure if the message was communicated well, not being able to talk and all, but I’m very glad you did.”

Grian breathed out, relieved that he hadn’t upset him.

“So? Ready for round two? Tomorrow, right?” He looks around to Techno, who nods, they had apparently discussed ‘round two’, whatever that was, soon after he had woken up. He was just glad that Tommy didn’t seem too shaken up about his experience and was rearing to go again.

“What do you mean by round two?” He proceeded with caution, unsure on whether he would like what he was about to hear or not.

“okay, so, basically, we need to get to Dream, and Techno thought that the mask was the way he’s been around so long, if we’re right about the really ancient admin Dream theory, so we just smash it and problem solved, he’s powerless.” He grinned, seemingly proud of the plan, which made Grian wonder whether he had come up with it himself. 

“What do we need to do?”

…

Dream lounged on his throne, watching those in front of him, they stood, obediently in lines. He was ready for whatever attack was launched next, he had decided to keep them here and wait for the hermits to come to him.

He knew he wouldn’t have to wait long, so he leant back, leaning towards the back of his throne, as the moon rose above him, casting him in silver.

…

Tommy stood, his feathers blowing in the breeze, the wind whispering in his ears as it stroked along the top of his head. He stood on the dark prismarine of the roof, watching as the sun began to clear the horizon, rising fully clear of it. As soon as the orb was hanging low he dove off the roof, down to the assembled crowd below him, they made a gap for him to land in, clearing back quite a bit, knowing that he would leave it until the last second to pull up, they all knew the person who taught him to fly after all.

He landed, knees bending to cushion it. He straightened up, pulling his wings against his back in an orderly fashion. Xisuma knew what him coming down from the top meant, as he pulled the non-hybrid group away and into the forest from one direction.

That left Tommy with Techno, Wilbur, Grian and some other hermit, Ren, who was apparently a wolf shifter. He hadn’t seen the man much before the fight, but gave him a friendly greeting before he shifted.

The others followed suit, shifting and making their way into the jungle. They moved near silently through the thick underbrush, easily slipping through the densest areas. Tommy was impressed by Techno, Wilbur and Ren, who were being forced to move through the thickest and noisiest layer, as they weren’t able to fly above the forest floor like Tommy and Grian.

They made their way around to one side of the base, knowing there would be a door there from other hermits’ knowledge. Tommy shifted back, crouching and making sure no one was at the entrance before gesturing the others to follow him.

Silently the other four shifted, withdrawing their weapons and potions. Techno splashed a turtle master potion at their feet before they entered, they knew as soon as they got in there that they would need to finish the fight and either subdue or drive out the invaders.

The moved through the passages, Wilbur taking the lead as the one who memorised the layout on his last visit there, apparently this was the door they had come through, the other one too busy with players running in and out. He was impressed by Wilbur’s memory as they came upon the central room, which was already filled with fighting.

Tommy leapt into the air, shifting mid-jump as he did so. He coasted high above the fighting mass of bodies below him, he knew his task and he would stick to it. Keeping to the shadows cast by the edges of the roof he moved on silent wings through the air, he was careful to not let any ranged weapon-holders spot him, unwilling to be shot out of the air.

His eyes were drawn to one side, as he saw the gold of a crown, he almost dismissed it as just being Eret, knowing the king would most likely still be wearing it, before he noticed who exactly was wearing Eret’s crown.

He had never really liked Eret, not after they betrayed them, allowing Dream and his allies to kill them in the Final Control room, but he didn’t hate the king, he could see why he had done it. But the fact that it was Dream wearing Eret’s crown filled him with rage.

He turned towards the man, diving down and shifting as he neared the ground, his feet slammed into Dream’s chest at full force, sending the man crashing into the ground. He held him pinned there, one knee on his chest, pinning him down. It was oddly reminiscent of the day Tommy had escaped, slipping into the portal and away from the hell that was the Dream SMP.

He pressed his knee further into the man’s chest, holding his axe up to his neck. Dream knew he was at Tommy’s mercy now, he wouldn’t be able to pull up one of his follower’s, Tommy would slice his neck before he could, releasing all those under his power.

The man under him stilled, relaxing completely.

“Now, Tommy. I think this has gone a bit far don’t you?” He clenched his teeth at the sickly-sweet tone Dream was using, “I’m your friend aren’t I?”

That one question made Tommy freeze, he knew that Dream wasn’t his friend, it was obvious. The man had trapped him in a cage. But for a while he had been all that Tommy had, he was the only person that bothered to visit him, the only one that had turned up to his party.

He knew that it was just so Dream could isolate Tommy, could get him on his own and make him bend to his will.

“I think this has gone a bit far.” He repeated, “Put your stuff in the pit Tommy.” He could hear that the man was smiling, he knew full well what he was doing, and he would continue to do it until Tommy gave in.

“Put your stuff i-” he was cut off by a sickening crack. Tommy had swung his axe down halfway through Dream’s sentence, cracking the delicate porcelain in half. Tommy couldn’t help but be curious what the man looked like underneath it, no one has seen him without it.

He hears the struggles of Dream’s followers die down, though he can hardly call them that anymore, as the green seeps out of their eyes, returning the colours to normal. He looks down at Dream, at the way the man seems to be slowing. His lime green eyes stare up at Tommy, the hatred burning within them the exact opposite of the grin still stretched over his lips.

“-the pit.” he wheezed out. He didn’t speak after that, all of the magic draining out of the mask in one large cloud, it spreads out over the room and dissipates. Tommy glances back down at the man he’s knelt on, the man he just killed he realises.

He scrambles backwards off of the body, standing up on shaky limbs, his wings shook behind him as though they were being buffeted by a violent wind. But the room was silent, barely anybody daring to breathe as the look upon the corpse of the man that had seemed unkillable.

Tommy watches as the SMP members slowly sit down, all their energy drained, he watches numbly as people begin to move around the room, distributing healing potions. He distantly watches himself as he draws his wings in, sitting down on the ground with a dull thud.

He sits and stares at the body of the man he’s just killed, he had never killed someone permanently before, he had thought it would never happen, believing that he himself was on his last life and would be dead long before he summoned the courage to kill someone.

He comes back to himself slightly as he sees Tubbo across the room from him, the best friend that he hadn’t seen in over a year, the one that had exiled him. None of the other people in the room seemed to be paying much attention to the president, the only person who spoke to him was Stress, offering him a potion, which he gratefully accepted, giving her a smile.

Tommy stood up, making his way across the room, pretending he didn’t feel the eyes of multiple people follow him. Puffing his feathers up, he hoped he would dissuade more people from watching him. It worked; he felt the eyes stop boring holes into his back as he reached Tubbo.

He sat down next to his best friend. Tubbo turned to him, worry evident in his eyes as he watched Tommy. Tommy turned towards him as well, opening his arms, the invitation clear. Tubbo practically fell into his arms, grasping his friend’s shirt as he let apology after apology fall from his lips. Tommy just hugged him back, glad that his friend wasn’t reluctant to talk to him after he had just watched him kill a person.

Tubbo pulled back from Tommy’s hug, “I’m sorry Tommy. I’m sorry for exiling you, I’m sorry for not coming to visit you, and I’m sorry for grabbing you in this room, I couldn’t stop him, he just forced my hand, so to speak. But I’m sorry, I truly, truly am.”

“You’re an idiot,” he scoffs, “I’d already forgiven you. I wouldn’t be much of a best friend if I didn’t.”

He pulls out his compass, the one he had held close, the one engraved with ‘Your Tubbo’. He pressed it against Tubbo’s, hoping he got the message.

Tubbo just hugged him closer, horns headbutting Tommy’s chest slightly.

…

Tommy flew up to the roof of his new house, positioned high up in the trees, hanging precariously from several trunks, it was incredibly structurally sound though, Grian and Mumbo having helped him with building it.

He landed on the wooden platform he had designed so it was specifically high up, high enough for him to look over the whole of the jungle. He heard a huffing below him, laughing as he looks down and sees Tubbo climbing the ladder.

“Stupid fuckin’ chicken.” He hears Tubbo grumble under his breath, which just makes him laugh harder. Tubbo makes it up the ladder, flopping down on the platform and laying there.

“I understand that you’re a bird and all, but did you seriously have to build our house so high up, it’s annoying to have to climb whilst you just fly, easy-peasy, up and down, quickly as you’d like.”

“You were the one who thought a treehouse would be cool.” He protested.

“When I said treehouse, I meant, like, twenty feet off the ground, not over a hundred.”

“Sure, goat boy,” he shuffled to turn his back to Tubbo, “could you do the feathers near the base? I haven’t visited Grian recently, and I can’t reach the ones back there.”

He hears Tubbo roll over and scooch up behind him, beginning to run his fingers through the feathers, successfully detangling them.

“God, Tubbo. What would I be without you?”

“Yourself.”

Tommy smiled and watched the setting sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh, hey. i hope you liked the ending. i had to put that line in there becaus it broke me in the finale, so i wanted it to be happier.  
> i hope this story has a satisfying end for you.  
> thank you for all the kudos and comments, every single one is appreciated <3

**Author's Note:**

> Come shout at me on Tumblr, or in the comments below! I wanna know what you think! 
> 
> Tumblr: http://inky-starss.tumblr.com


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